THE  INFLUENCE  OF 
EMERSON 


BY 

EDWIN    D.  MEAD 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN   UNITARIAN   ASSOCIATION 
1903 


,.  ,  ,     .  COPYRIGHT  1003 
AMERICA*  UNITARIAN! 


. 

^A:i:-:i  :•'• 


TO 

EDWARD    EVERETT    HALE 

THE    FRIEND    OF    EMERSON 

THE  FRIEND  AND  AIDER  OF  A  MULTITUDE  OF  US, 
WHO  LOVE  HIM  AND  REVERE  HIM 

"  HE  IS  OUR  BISHOP,  AND  WE  HAVE  NOT  DONE  WITH  HIM  YET." 


These  papers,  touching  a  few  of  the  many  influences  of 
Emerson,  philosophical,  religious,  literary,  and  political, 
have  served,  the  last  tewo  many  times,  as  public  addresses. 
Parts  of  all  of  them  are  twenty  years  old,  and  all  of  them 
have  grown  in  the  years.  Some  parts  have  changed  much 
more  than  others;  and  if  they  continued  to  lie  on  the  table, 
answering  calls,  for  some  years  yet,  all  might  see  greater 
changes  still.  I  have  found  that  fevj  studies  of  Emerson 
bring  out  his  thought  and  attitude  more  clearly  or  impressively 
than  those  in  vohich  we  vievj  him  in  relation  to  Parker, 
with  whom  among  religious  teachers  in  his  time  his  sym 
pathies  were  closest,  and  to  Carlyle,  with  whom  his  affinities 
and  contrasts  are  equally  striking  and  didactic,  There  are 
doubtless  repetitions  in  the  papers  here  and  there ;  and  this, 
and  much  besides,  their  original  character  and  purpose  must 
excuse.  They  are  brought  together  here,  such  as  they  are,  in 
the  hope  that  they  may  do  their  part,  with  the  many  words 
that  will  be  said  in  this  centennial  time,  to  prompt  young 
men  and  women  to  such  new  companionship  with  Emerson 
as  shall  give  them  a  larger  portion  of  his  idealism  and 
lofty  spirit  in  religion  and  philosophy  and  in  the  service  of 
mankind. 


Contents 

PAGE 

I.     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EMERSON    .     .          3 

II.     EMERSON  AND  THEODORE  PARKER     .       91 

III.      EMERSON  AND  CARLYLE       .     .     .     .     157 


I 

The  Philosophy  of  Emerson 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EMERSON 

TRANSCENDENTALISM  is  the  popular  term 
for  the  philosophy  of  Emerson,  with  those 
who  recognize  that  he  had  a  philosophy. 
Men  call  him  a  Transcendentalist,  as  they 
called  him  and  his  friends  sixty  years  ago. 
He  did  not  like  the  term,  and  thought  that 
most  people  who  used  it  knew  little  about 
what  it  meant.  As  commonly  used  by 
the  intelligent  man  sixty  years  ago  or  now, 
and  as  accepted  by  Emerson,  it  is  simply 
another  word  for  Idealist.  "  What  is  popu-j 
larly  called  Transcendentalism  among  us," 
he  said  himself,  in  the  midst  of  the  Tran 
scendental  movement  in  New  England,  "  is 
Idealism, —  Idealism  as  it  appears  in  1842." 
"  The  Idealism  of  the  present  day,"  he  said, 
"  acquired  the  name  of  Transcendental  from 
the  use  of  that  term  by  Immanuel  Kant,  of 
Konigsberg,  who  replied  to  the  sceptical 
philosophy  of  Locke,  which  insisted  that 
there  was  nothing  in  the  intellect  which 
was  not  previously  in  the  experience  of 


4         The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  senses,  by  showing  that  there  was  a  very 
important  class  of  ideas,  or  imperative  forms, 
which  did  not  come  by  experience,  but 
through  which  experience  was  acquired ; 
that  these  were  intuitions  of  the  mind 
itself;  and  he  denominated  them  Tran 
scendental  forms.  The  extraordinary  pro 
foundness  and  precision  of  that  man's 
thinking  have  given  vogue  to  his  nomen 
clature,  in  Europe  and  America,  to  that 
extent,  that  whatever  belongs  to  the  class 
of  intuitive  thought  is  popularly  called  at 
the  present  day  Transcendental." 

"  As  thinkers,"  says  Emerson,  "  mankind 
have  ever  divided  into  two  sects,  Materialists 
and  Idealists ;  the  first  class  founded  on  ex 
perience,  the  second  on  consciousness ;  they 
perceive  that  the  senses  are  not  final ;  they 
give  us  representations  of  things,  but  what 
are  the  things  themselves  they  cannot  tell. 
The  materialist  insists  on  facts,  on  history, 
on  the  force  of  circumstances,  and  the  ani 
mal  wants  of  man ;  the  idealist,  on  the 
power  of  Thought  and  of  Will,  on  inspira 
tion,  on  miracle,  on  individul  culture.  The 
idealist  concedes  all  that  the  other  affirms, 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson        5 

.  .  .  and  then  asks  him  for  his  grounds  of 
assurance  that  things  are  as  his  senses  repre 
sent  them.  But  I,  he  says,  affirm  facts  not 
affected  by  the  illusions  of  sense,  facts  which 
are  of  the  same  nature  as  the  faculty  which 
reports  them.  .  .  .  He  does  not  deny  the 
sensuous  fact :  by  no  means ;  but  he  will 
not  see  that  alone." 

Most  of  us  have  a  philosophy  of  some 
sort,  although  most  of  us  are  not  philoso 
phers.  We  have  known  —  have  we  not  — 
country  parsons  not  a  few  who  had  a  far  bet 
ter  philosophy  than  not  a  few  men  famous, 
and  deservedly  so,  as  original  and  powerful 
philosophers.  It  is  common  enough  for 
men  to  say  that  Emerson  was  not  a  philoso 
pher;  and  they  tell  us  what  the  titles  of  a 
man's  books  must  be,  the  order  of  his  argu 
ment,  and  the  fashion  of  his  phrase,  to  make 
him  a  philosopher.  They  remark  Emer 
son's  own  impatience  with  the  metaphysi 
cians.  "What  sensible  man  ever  looked 
twice  into  a  metaphysical  book  ? " —  to 
which  question  of  his  the  answer  is  of 
course:  He  himself, —  not  two  times,  but 
seventy  times  two ;  for  Kant  and  Plato  and 


6         The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Plotinus  are  metaphysicians.  They  say  he 
was  a  poet,  not  a  philosopher,  as  if  one 
could  not  be  the  other,  and  as  if  he  were 
not  many  things  besides  a  poet.  Plato  was 
a  poet.  The  indubitable  philosophers  have 
chosen  many  forms.  One  writes  a  dialogue 
which  he  calls  "  Phsedrus  "  or  "  Alciphron," 
another  a  poem  on  "  The  Nature  of  Things," 
another  a  treatise  on  "  Prior  Analytics  "  or  a 
"  Novum  Organum,"  another  an  "  Epistle 
to  the  Romans,"  another  a  "  City  of  God," 
another  a  "  Summa  Theologize,"  another  a 
commentary,  another  a  sermon,  another  a 
book  on  the  Unknowable.  The  "  father 
of  philosophy "  did  not  write  at  all,  but 
talked  about  water  or  some  soul  or  force  in 
water  as  the  original  principle  of  all  things. 
The  thought  and  purpose,  not  the  form  and 
method,  are  what  determine.  The  contents 
of  poetry  are  as  various  as  the  forms  of 
philosophy ;  and  a  man  may  be  a  very  great 
poet  and  not  properly  a  philosopher  at  all. 
But  Dante  was  a  philosopher,  and  Milton  and 
Goethe  and  Browning, —  in  their  poetry  and 
out  of  it, —  because  their  thought  is  con 
cerned,  as  truly  as  Plato's  or  Spinoza's,  with 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson       7 

the  original  principle  of  things,  the  great 
problems  of  the  universe  and  of  the  soul. 
This  was  true  of  Emerson,  and  true  in 
higher  and  more  memorable  way  than  of 
any  other  poet  or  thinker  of  America.  He 
was  poet  plus  philosopher ;  although  he 
would  not  thank  any  of  us  for  the  argu 
ment,  and  although  none  surely  would  aver 
that  he  wrote  like  Locke  or  Leibnitz,  or 
deny  that  he  chose  to  fly  where  some  choose 
to  walk  and  some  have  to.  In  truth,  as 
usual,  so  here,  he  has  stated  his  own  posi 
tion  far  better  than  any  of  us  could  state  it 
for  him.  "  I  think  metaphysics  a  gram 
mar,"  he  said  in  his  first  lecture  on  <c  The 
Natural  History  of  Intellect,"  "to  which, 
once  read,  we  seldom  return.  My  meta 
physics  are  to  the  end  of  use.  This  watch 
ing  of  the  intellect,  in  season  and  out  of  sea 
son,  to  see  the  mechanics  of  the  thing,  is  a 
little  of  the  detective.  The  analytic  process 
is  cold  and  bereaving  and,  shall  I  say  it? 
somewhat  mean,  as  spying.  There  is  some 
thing  surgical  in  metaphysics  as  we  treat  it. 
Were  not  an  ode  a  better  form  ?  The  poet 
sees  wholes  and  avoids  analysis;  the  meta- 


8          The  Influence  of  Emerson 

physician,  dealing  as  it  were  with  the  mathe 
matics  of  the  mind,  puts  himself  out  of  the 
way  of  the  inspiration,  loses  that  which  is 
the  miracle  and  creates  the  worship.  I  think 
that  philosophy  is  still  rude  and  elementary. 
It  will  one  day  be  taught  by  poets.  The 
poet  is  in  the  natural  attitude ;  he  is  believ 
ing, —  the  philosopher,  after  some  struggle, 
having  only  reasons  for  believing."  The 
same  thought  appears  in  his  essay  on  Plu 
tarch, —  the  thought  of  the  menace  of  an 
exclusive  devotion  to  metaphysics  for  any 
but  the  broadest  minds.  "  We  are  always 
interested  in  the  man  who  treats  the  intel 
lect  well.  We  expect  it  from  the  philoso 
pher —  from  Plato,  Aristotle,  Spinoza  and 
Kant ;  but  we  know  that  metaphysical 
studies  in  any  but  minds  of  large  horizon 
and  incessant  aspiration  have  their  dangers. 
One  asks  sometimes  whether  a  metaphy 
sician  can  treat  the  intellect  well.  The 
central  fact  is  the  superhuman  intelligence, 
pouring  into  us  from  its  unknown  fountain, 
to  be  received  with  religious  awe,  and  de 
fended  from  any  mixture  of  our  will.  But 
this  high  Muse  comes  and  goes;  and  the 


The   Philosophy  of  Emerson       9 

danger  is  that,  when  the  Muse  is  wanting, 
the  student  is  prone  to  supply  its  place 
with  microscopic  subtleties  and  logomachy." 
"  Philosophy  of  the  People  "  was  the  sub 
ject  of  one  of  his  courses  of  lectures, —  per 
haps  a  development  of  the  "  First  Philoso 
phy  "  with  which  his  mind  was  occupied  the 
year  before  he  published  "  Nature " ;  and 
philosophy  of  or  for  the  people  he  felt 
must  be  concrete  and  immediately  related 
to  activity  and  life.  "  To  great  results 
of  thought  and  morals/'  he  said,  "the 
steps  are  not  many ;  and  it  is  not  the 
masters  who  spin  the  ostentatious  continu 
ity."  Nevertheless,  the  masters  do  spin 
continuity, —  some  of  them;  and  it  is  well 
for  us  that  they  do.  The  logic  of  Kant  is 
as  necessary  as  the  insight  of  Emerson  ;  and 
to  the  one  Transcendentalist  we  pay  honor 
as  to  the  other. 

In  estimating  any  philosophy,  there  is 
nothing  which  illuminates  and  tests  it  better 
than  its  application  to  the  distinctive  ten 
dencies  and  problems  of  the  time.  How  do 
our  science  and  society  look  in  its  light,  and 
how  does  it  bear  theirs  ?  The  dominant 


io       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

and  distinctive  doctrine  of  our  time,  per 
vading  every  field, —  nature,  physics,  psy 
chology,  anthropology,  history,  politics, 
ethics,  and  religion, —  has  been  the  doctrine 
of  evolution.  How  does  the  philosophy 
of  Emerson  dispose  of  that,  and  how  does 
that  deal  with  it  ? 

In  speaking  of  Emerson  and  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  there  is,  of  course,  no  intention 
to  imply  that  we  have  here  an  instance  of 
the  old  antithesis  between  Idealism  and  Ma 
terialism.  Emerson  and  Darwin,  to  name 
the  name  most  conspicuously  identified  in 
our  time  with  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
represent  no  such  opposition.  It  is,  indeed, 
scarcely  legitimate  to  speak  of  Darwin  as 
having  to  do  directly  with  philosophy  or  the 
problem  and  original  principle  of  the  uni 
verse  at  all.  He  was  not  a  philosopher,  but 
a  wise  student  of  the  processes  of  nature, 
whose  results  make  immediately  neither  for 
nor  against  the  principles  either  of  Idealism 
or  Materialism,  and  were  urged  for  and 
against  neither.  Certainly  do  not  make 
against  Idealism,  as  it  is  not  extravagant 
to  say  that  Darwin's  truth  lies  in  Emerson's 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      n 

philosophy  as  a  natural  and  essential  moment 
of  it.  Emerson  is  precisely  a  philosopher, 
—  ever  approaching  the  problem  of  the 
universe  both  from  the  soul-side  and  the 
nature-side,  ever  standing,  confident  and 
patient,  in  the  presence  of  the  sphinx. 
Much  more  than  philosopher,  but,  as  I 
have  said,  essentially  philosopher,  and  our 
greatest,  perhaps  our  only  great,  philosopher. 
"The  poet,"  he  says,  "differs  from  the 
philosopher  only  herein,  that  the  one  pro 
poses  Beauty  as  his  main  end,  the  other 
Truth.  But  the  philosopher,  not  less  than 
the  poet,  postpones  the  apparent  order  and 
relations  of  things  to  the  empire  of  thought. 
f  The  problem  of  philosophy/  according  to 
Plato,  c  is,  for  all  that  exists  conditionally,  to 
find  a  ground  unconditioned  and  absolute/  ' 
And  it  is  worthy  of  noting,  when  we  think 
of  Emerson  as  approaching  the  world- 
problem  from  the  side  of  mind  and  of 
Darwin  as  a  student  of  the  principles  of 
nature,  that  Emerson's  own  most  energetic 
and  systematic  attempt  to  find  and  formu 
late  the  absolute  ground  of  things  is  the 
essay  on  —  not  the  Soul,  but  Nature. 


12       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

"All  that  is  separate  from  us,  all  which 
philosophy  distinguishes  as  the  NOT  ME, — 
that  is,  both  nature  and  art,  all  other  men 
and  my  own  body, —  must  be  ranked  under 
this  name  NATURE." 

The  little  book  on  "  Nature  "  was  Emer 
son's  first  authentic  utterance.  It  came  a 
year  before  the  address  on  the  American 
Scholar,  two  years  before  the  address  to  the 
Harvard  Divinity  School.  It  came  the 
year  after  the  publication  of  Strauss's  Life 
of  Jesus.  Yet  who  divined,  in  the  hubbub 
of  that  tumbling  of  old  sanctions,  that  in 
spiration  even  then  was  speaking  at  the 
door,  fresh,  faithful,  positive,  and  jubilant, 
pausing  not  so  much  as  to  note  the  collapse 
of  images,  but  simply  speaking  the  word  of 
the  soul  under  the  soul's  eternal  forms,  with 
the  soul's  veritable  and  self-vouching  ac 
cent  ?  "  The  foregoing  generations  beheld 
God  and  nature  face  to  face;  we,  through 
their  eyes.  Why  should  not  we  also  enjoy 
an  original  relation  to  the  universe  ?  Why 
should  not  we  have  a  poetry  and  philosophy 
of  insight  and  not  of  tradition,  and  a  religion 
by  revelation  to  us,  and  not  the  history  of 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      13 

theirs?  Why  should  we  grope  among  the 
dry  bones  of  the  past,  or  put  the  living 
generation  into  masquerade  out  of  its  faded 
wardrobe?  The  sun  shines  to-day  also. 
There  is  more  wool  and  flax  in  the  fields." 

It  was  a  still,  small  voice,  this  little  book, 
which  came  without  its  author's  name, —  still 
as  the  coming  of  the  green  in  May-time, — 
and  few  heard  it  (five  hundred  copies  of  the 
book  were  disposed  of,  we  are  told,  only 
after  twelve  years) ;  though  as  many  as 
heard  and  received  it,  to  them  it  gave  power 
to  become  the  sons  of  God,  to  know  them 
selves  as  such, —  a  knowledge  which  had 
become  well-nigh  lost  and  unauthentic  in 
churches  and  among  men.  Its  accent  was 
almost  drowned  by  the  thunder  of  Carlyle's 
Cf  Sartor  Resartus,"  which  Emerson  gave  to 
America  at  the  same  time,  to  preach,  in  a 
way  so  different,  the  same  Everlasting  Yea. 

Emerson's  first  authentic  utterance,  "  Nat 
ure  "  is  also  the  most  sufficient  expression 
of  his  general  philosophy,  and  the  noblest 
possible  expression  of  a  pure  idealism, —  to 
my  thinking,  the  most  penetrating  specula 
tive  wor4  yet  spoken  in  our  New  World. 


14       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

It  could  almost  be  wished  that  there  might 
be  professorships  of  this  book,  "  Nature/' 
and  the  correlated  essays,  in  our  colleges, —  a 
not  extravagant  wish  surely,  when  we  re 
member  in  how  many  professor  of  philos 
ophy  means  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time 
professor  of  some  book  so  infinitely  smaller 
and  poorer,  by  Herbert  Spencer  or  another 
Englishman  or  William  Hamilton  or  an 
other  Scotchman.  I  think  that  any  young 
man  going  out  into  life  with  his  mind  well 
opened  to  the  real  intension  and  extension 
of  those  views  of  Nature  as  Commodity, 
Beauty,  Language,  and  Discipline  would 
have  more  to  be  grateful  for  and  wherewith 
to  turn  his  chaos  into  cosmos  than  all 
chapters  on  the  limits  of  knowledge,  the 
rungs  of  the  ladder,  or  the  classes  of  the 
faculties  can  possibly  be  made  to  yield. 
What  invitations  everywhere,  and  provoca 
tions,  to  excursions  into  the  history  of 
speculation  and  of  every  science  !  Where 
should  we  find  a  more  fruitful  text  for  a 
Kritik  of  Language,  which  Max  Miiller  used 
to  tell  us,  with  some  reason,  is  the  Kritik 
which  our  philosophy  needs  next?  For 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      15 

here  we  have  no  mere  formal  and  punctili 
ous  thinking, —  improved  metric  scheme  of 
classing  Aryan  and  Semitic  roots, —  but  are 
borne  directly  to  that  primary  question,  why 
and  how  it  is  that  spirit  symbolizes  and 
bodies  itself  in  nature  and  in  words,  and  what 
is  the  significance  and  scope  of  that  speech 
which  man  has  evoked  from  himself  and 
which  remains,  firmly  conserving  his  thought, 
while  the  generations  pass.  Only  Bushnell 
in  New  England  has  thought  with  equal 
subtlety  and  fruitfulness  upon  this  question. 
Where  better  or  more  natural  ground  from 
which  to  consider  Darwinism  itself  and  the 
modern  statement  of  development?  The 
very  motto  of  "  Nature "  might  well  be 
adopted  as  the  tersest  and  most  pregnant 
text  for  our  evolution-philosophy  :  — 


"  A  subtle  chain  of  countless  rings 
The  next  unto  the  farthest  brings ; 
The  eye  reads  omens  where  it  goes, 
And  speaks  all  languages  the  rose ; 
And,  striving  to  be  man,  the  worm 
Mounts  through  all  the  spires  of  form." 

We  are  brought  by  "  Nature  "  into  con- 


1 6       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

tact  with  the  apostolic  succession  of  the 
lords  of  thought,  from  the  Egyptians  and 
the  Brahmins  to  Bacon  and  Swedenborg. 
Brought  into  contact  especially  with  the 
great  modern  Germans.  They  are  not 
cited ;  but  "  Nature,"  written  fresh  from 
the  reading  of  the  Germans,  of  Coleridge 
and  Carlyle,  is  so  instinct  with  the  spirit 
and  purpose  of  the  Transcendental  Philos 
ophy,  that  it  were  well  enough  to  direct  the 
mind  unsatisfied  with  the  book's  own  fresh 
and  simple  word,  and  craving  statement  in 
syllogistic  #,  b,  c,  and  corollaries  of  the 
manner  of  Emerson's  approach  to  the 
world-problem,  to  the  pages  of  Kant  and 
Hegel  and  Fichte.  He  takes  us,  in  the 
very  beginning,  to  where  Kant  leaves  us  in 
that  last  page  of  his  Ethics.  "  If  a  man 
would  be  alone,  let  him  look  at  the  stars.  .  .  . 
One  might  think  the  atmosphere  was  made 
transparent  with  this  design,  to  give  man,  in 
the  heavenly  bodies,  the  perpetual  presence 
of  the  sublime."  "  Undoubtedly,"  he  says, 
"  we  have  no  questions  to  ask  which  are 
unanswerable.  We  must  trust  the  perfec 
tion  of  the  creation  so  far  as  to  believe  that 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      17 

whatever  curiosity  the  order  of  things  has 
awakened  in  our  minds  the  order  of  things 
can  satisfy."  "  I  maintain,"  Kant  had  said, 
in  his  great  Kritik,  "  that  no  question  re 
ferring  to  an  object  of  pure  reason  can  be 
insoluble  for  the  same  human  reason ;  and 
that  no  excuse  of  inevitable  ignorance  on 
our  side,  or  of  unfathomable  depth  on  the 
side  of  the  problem,  can  release  us  from  the 
obligation  to  answer  it  thoroughly  and  com 
pletely  ;  because  the  same  concept  which 
enables  us  to  ask  the  question  must  qualify 
us  to  answer  it,  considering  that  the  object 
itself  does  not  exist  except  in  the  concept." 
"  Beauty,"  says  Emerson  in  "  Nature,"  "  in 
its  largest  and  profoundest  sense,  is  one 
expression  for  the  universe.  God  is  the 
All-fair.  Truth  and  goodness  and  beauty 
are  but  different  faces  of  the  same  All." 
This  is  another  utterance,  if  we  please,  of 
that  Hegelian  principle,  that  God  is  Being, 
Essence,  Idea,  and  whether  we  say  this  or 
that  is  not  a  question  of  false  or  true,  but 
of  completer  or  less  complete  definition, 
a  question  of  the  gradation  of  circles  and 
of  the  circumference  and  penetration  of 


1 8        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  present  thought.  It  should  be  said  in 
general  that  there  is  almost  nothing  new  in 
principle  in  Emerson's  philosophy.  We 
are  everywhere  in  the  same  philosophic 
atmosphere  which  we  breathe  with  Plato 
and  Plotinus  and  with  the  post-Kantian 
idealists.  Everything  easily  falls  into  har 
mony  with  the  great  Greeks  and  the  great 
Germans.  The  fundamental  principle  of 
"The  Natural  History  of  Intellect,"  that 
"  every  law  of  nature  is  a  law  of  mind,"  is 
precisely  the  central  principle  of  Hegel's 
Logic  and  Philosophy  of  Nature,  there  de 
veloped  and  applied  with  a  pertinacity  and 
rigor  entirely  foreign  to  Emerson's  inspira 
tional  genius.  Emerson's  virtue  is  in  il 
lumination  and  the  immediate  marriage  of 
the  truth  clearly  apprehended  to  poetry  and 
life. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  on  Ideal 
ism  in  "  Nature,"  Emerson  speaks  with 
kindness  and  with  warmth  of  the  extreme 
subjective  theory,  for  which  Fichte  stood  in 
the  first  period  of  his  thought, —  or,  indeed, 
for  the  very  illusionism  of  Berkeley, —  and 
condemns  the  frivolous  who  make  merry  with 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      19 

the  theory,  as  if  its  consequences  were  bur 
lesque  and  as  if  it  affected  the  stability  of 
nature.  Fichte,  viewing  all  human  life  as 
moral  evolution,  conceived  the  outer  world 
as  the  mere  ethical  gymnasium  provided  for 
the  mind  and  belonging  to  it  by  its  very 
constitution.  "A  noble  doubt,"  Emerson 
says,  "  perpetually  suggests  itself,  whether 
the  end  of  Discipline  be  not  the  Final  Cause 
of  the  Universe, —  and  whether  nature  out 
wardly  exists.  It  is  a  sufficient  account  of 
that  Appearance  we  call  the  World,  that 
God  will  teach  a  human  mind,  and  so  makes 
it  the  receiver  of  a  certain  number  of  con 
gruent  sensations,  which  we  call  sun  and 
moon,  man  and  woman,  house  and  trade. 
What  difference  does  it  make  whether  Orion 
is  up  there  in  heaven,  or  some  god  paints 
the  image  in  the  firmament  of  the  soul  ?  " 
"  To  the  senses  and  the  unrenewed  under 
standing,"  he  says,  "  belongs  a  sort  of  in 
stinctive  belief  in  the  absolute  existence  of 
nature.  Things  are  ultimates.  But  the 
presence  of  Reason  mars  this  faith.  Time 
and  space  relations  vanish  as  laws  are  known. 
The  first  effort  of  thought  tends  to  relax 


20       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  despotism  of  the  senses,  and  shows  us 
nature  aloof  and,  as  it  were,  afloat."  This 
is  Hegel's  Pbenomenologie  in  other  dialect. 
Turgot  said,  "He  that  has  never  doubted 
the  existence  of  matter  may  be  assured  he 
has  no  aptitude  for  metaphysical  inquiries." 
"  It  is  the  uniform  effect  of  culture  on  the 
human  mind,"  says  Emerson,  "  not  to  shake 
our  faith  in  the  stability  of  particular  phe 
nomena," —  any  distrust  of  the  permanence 
of  laws,  he  says,  would  paralyze  the  faculties 
of  man, — "  but  to  lead  us  to  regard  nature 
as  a  phenomenon,  not  a  substance."  Ideas, 
he  says, —  speaking  in  Platonic  phrase, — 
immortal,  necessary,  uncreated  natures,  are 
accessible  to  few  men,  as  objects  of  science, 
although  all  men  are  capable  of  being  raised 
by  piety  or  by  passion  into  their  region ; 
and  in  their  presence  "  we  think  of  nature  as 
an  appendix  to  the  soul."  "  Both  religion 
and  ethics,"  he  says,  "  put  nature  under  foot. 
The  first  and  last  lesson  of  religion  is,  c  The 
things  that  are  seen  are  temporal ;  the  things 
that  are  unseen  are  eternal/  ' 

To  a  pure  subjective  idealism,  however, 
Emerson  does  not  commit  himself,  either  in 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      21 

"  Nature  "  or  anywhere  else.  At  the  very 
beginning  he  saw  clearly  the  full  circle  which 
it  took  Fichte  his  whole  lifetime  to  describe, 
and  the  Universal  Spirit,  constituting  and 
informing  all  individuals,  as  all  nature,  is  as 
distinctly  recognized  and  fundamental  in  this 
first  utterance  as  in  u  Worship  "  and  "  The 
Over-Soul,"  or  as  in  Fichte's  "  Way  to  the 
Blessed  Life."  "Idealism,"  he  says,— 
subjective  idealism, — "  acquaints  us  with  the 
total  disparity  between  the  evidence  of  our 
own  being  and  the  evidence  of  the  world's 
being.  The  one  is  perfect;  the  other  in 
capable  of  any  assurance.  .  .  .  Yet,  if  Ideal 
ism  only  deny  the  existence  of  matter,  it 
does  not  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  spirit. 
It  leaves  God  out  of  me.  Then  the  heart 
resists  it,  because  it  balks  the  affections  in 
denying  substantive  being  to  men  and 
women.  Nature  is  so  pervaded  with  human 
life,  that  there  is  something  of  humanity  in 
all,  and  in  every  particular.  But  this  theory 
makes  nature  foreign  to  me,  and  does  not 
account  for  that  consanguinity  which  we 
acknowledge  in  it."  Its  significance  and 
value,  therefore,  for  Emerson,  are  simply 


22        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

this :  that  it  serves  "  to  apprise  us  of  the 
eternal  distinction  between  the  soul  and  the 
world,"  vouching  the  mind  to  be  of  the 
fundamental  nature  of  things.  But  a  com 
plete  philosophy  demands  much  more. 
Emerson's  own  philosophy  goes  much  be 
yond.  Would  we  have  a  just  statement,  in 
one  word,  of  that  philosophy,  we  have  it  in 
this  same  "  Nature."  I  know  of  no  other 
passage  where  so  much  of  his  fundamental 
thought  is  so  well  balanced  and  compacted 
as  in  this  following :  — 

"Man  is  conscious  of  an  universal  soul 
within  or  behind  his  individual  life,  wherein, 
as  in  a  firmament,  the  natures  of  Justice, 
Truth,  Love,  Freedom,  arise  and  shine. 
This  universal  soul  he  calls  Reason  :  it  is 
not  mine  or  thine,  or  his,  but  we  are  its ; 
we  are  its  property  and  men.  And  the  blue 
sky  in  which  the  private  earth  is  buried,  the 
sky  with  its  eternal  calm,  and  full  of  ever 
lasting  orbs,  is  the  type  of  Reason.  That 
which,  intellectually  considered,  we  call  Rea 
son,  considered  in  relation  to  nature,  we  call 
Spirit.  Spirit  is  the  creator.  Spirit  hath 
life  in  itself.  And  man  in  all  ages  and 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      23 

countries  embodies  it  in  his  language,  as  the 
FATHER." 

Nature,  to  Emerson,  "  always  speaks  of 
Spirit.  .  .  It  is  a  great  shadow  pointing  al 
ways  to  the  sun  behind  us."  "  The  aspect 
of  nature  is  devout.  Like  the  figure  of 
Jesus,  she  stands  with  bended  head,  and 
hands  folded  upon  the  breast.  .  .  .  The 
noblest  ministry  of  nature  is  to  stand  as  the 
apparition  of  God.  It  is  the  organ  through 
which  the  universal  spirit  speaks  to  the  indi 
vidual,  and  strives  to  lead  back  the  individ 
ual  to  it."  "  The  world  proceeds  from  the 
same  spirit  as  the  body  of  man.  It  is  a  re 
moter  and  inferior  incarnation  of  God,  a 
projection  of  God  in  the  unconscious.  But 
it  is  not,  like  the  body,  now  subjected  to  the 
human  will.  Its  serene  order  is  inviolable 
by  us.  It  is  therefore,  to  us,  a  fixed  point 
whereby  we  may  measure  our  departure. 
We  are  as  much  strangers  in  nature  as  we 
are  aliens  from  God." 

This  last  thought  Emerson  returns  to 
more  than  once.  "  Man  is  fallen,"  he  says, 
in  a  later  essay  ;  "  nature  is  erect  and  serves 
as  a  differential  thermometer,  detecting  the 


24        The   Influence  of  Emerson 

presence  or  absence  of  the  divine  sentiment 
in  man.  By  fault  of  our  dulness  and  self 
ishness  we  are  looking  up  to  nature,  but 
when  we  are  convalescent  nature  will  look 
up  to  us.  We  see  the  foaming  brook  with 
compunction  :  if  our  own  life  flowed  with 
the  right  energy,  we  should  shame  the 
brook." 

An  embodiment  of  God, —  this,  then,  is 
what  the  universe  is  to  Emerson.  "  There 
seems  to  be  a  necessity  in  spirit,"  he  says, 
"  to  manifest  itself  in  material  forms  ;  and 
day  and  night,  river  and  storm,  beast  and 
bird,  acid  and  alkali  pre-exist  in  necessary 
Ideas  in  the  mind  of  God,  and  are  what  they 
are  by  virtue  of  preceding  affections  in  the 
world  of  spirit."  "In  the  divine  order,"  he 
says,  in  the  address  on  "  The  Method  of 
Nature,"  "  intellect  is  primary ;  nature,  sec 
ondary  ;  it  is  the  memory  of  the  mind. 
That  which  once  existed  in  intellect  as  pure 
law  has  now  taken  body  as  Nature.  It  ex 
isted  already  in  the  mind  in  solution  ;  now, 
it  has  been  precipitated,  and  the  bright  sedi 
ment  is  the  world."  This  is  pure  Plato. 
Nature  he  views  purely  as  the  projection 


The  Philosophy   of  Emerson      25 

and  symbol  of  spirit.  "  Every  natural  fact 
•  is  a  symbol  of  some  spiritual  fact."  "  Every 
object  rightly  seen  unlocks  a  new  faculty 
of  the  soul."  If  you  wish  to  understand 
intellectual  philosophy,  he  said,  study  nat 
ural  science.  Every  time  you  discover  a  law 
of  things  you  discover  a  principle  of  mind. 
Every  law  of  nature,  he  said,  in  his  lectures 
on  the  "Natural  History  of  the  Intellect,"  is 
a  law  of  mind ;  and  it  is  quite  indifferent,  he 
said  boldly,  in  a  connection  where  he  would 
not  be  misunderstood,  whether  we  say  <(  all 
is  matter "  or  "  all  is  spirit."  For  to  him 
matter  is  all  spiritualized,  is  spirit's  other. 
Carlyle,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  a  certain 
kindness,  as  opposed  to  the  old  dualism,  to 
"  your  frightful  theory  of  materialism,  of 
man's  being  but  a  body,  and  therefore  at 
least  once  more  a  unity."  This,  he  said, 
may  be  the  paroxysm  which  was  critical,  and 
the  beginning  of  cure. 

This  thought,  that  everything  in  the  phe 
nomenal  world  takes  place  at  once  mechan 
ically  and  metaphysically, —  the  source  of 
the  mechanical,  however,  being  in  the  meta 
physical, —  was  a  constant  and  fundamental 


26        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

thought  with  Emerson.  "  A  perfect  paral 
lelism,"  he  says,  almost  in  the  words  of 
Leibnitz,  and  exactly  in  the  thought  of 
Hegel,  "  exists  between  nature  and  the 
laws  of  thought."  "  The  whole  of  nature 
agrees  with  the  whole  of  thought."  Pre 
cisely  herein,  indeed,  is  Emerson's  key  to 
the  interpretation  of  nature,  as  we  shall  con 
sider  more  carefully.  "  Things  are  know- 
able,"  he  says,  in  the  essay  on  Plato,  cc  be 
cause,  being  from  one,  things  correspond. 
There  is  a  scale  ;  and  the  correspondence  of 
heaven  to  earth,  of  matter  to  mind,  of  the 
part  to  the  whole,  is  our  guide."  He  elab 
orates  the  thought  in  many  ways  in  "  The 
Natural  History  of  Intellect."  "  I  believe 
the  mind  is  the  creator  of  the  world,  and  is 
ever  creating;  that  at  last  Matter  is  dead 
Mind ;  that  mind  makes  the  senses  it  sees 
with ;  that  the  genius  of  man  is  a  continu 
ation  of  the  power  that  made  him  and  that 
has  not  done  making  him."  Again,  in  a 
passage  of  wonderful  boldness :  "  As  the 
sun  is  conceived  to  have  made  our  system 
by  hurling  out  from  itself  the  outer  rings  of 
diffuse  ether  which  slowly  condensed  into 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      27 

earths  and  moons,  by  a  higher  force  of  the 
same  law  the  mind  detaches  minds,  and  a 
mind  detaches  thoughts  or  intellections. 
These  again  all  mimic  in  their  sphericity 
the  first  mind,  and  share  its  power."  As 
he  reasons  forward,  so  he  reasons  backward. 
"  From  whatever  side  we  look  at  Nature  we 
seem  to  be  exploring  the  figure  of  a  dis 
guised  man."  Nature  is  pervaded  with 
human  nature.  Man  finds  himself  every 
where  :  humanity  is  the  translator  of  nature 
and  of  God.  Of  all  philosophers  and  theo 
logians,  he  is,  in  a  high  but  most  real  sense, 
the  most  anthropomorphic.  Does  he  make 
us  feel  as  almost  no  other  the  divinity  of 
man  ?  So  does  he  see  most  penetratingly 
the  humanity  of  God.  Man  is  the  divine 
revealer  and  interpreter.  The  poet,  the 
prophet,  the  high  thinker,  the  Christs  of 
God,  the  completest  flowerings  of  the  divine 
process  and  life, —  these  are  the  real  medi 
ators  with  the  divine  Original. 

The  source  of  Nature  in  Universal  Spirit, 
says  Emerson,  is  betrayed  by  that  intimate 
unity  which  so  pervades  all  its  forms  as  to 
make  each  particle  a  microcosm,  which  faith- 


28        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

fully  renders  the  likeness  of  the  world.  In 
"The  Sphinx,"  the  first  poem  of  his  first 
collection,  thirty  years  before  Tennyson 
made  his  most  compact  expression  of  the 
central  truth, — 

u  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall,  .  .  . 
Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is,*'  — 

Emerson  had  put  it  in  this  wise :  — 

"  Through  a  thousand  voices 

Spoke  the  universal  dame  : 
Who  telleth  one  of  my  meanings 
Is  master  of  all  I  am." 

"A  leaf,  a  drop,  a  crystal,  a  moment  of 
time,"  says  Emerson  in  "  Nature,"  "  is  related 
to  the  whole,  and  partakes  of  the  perfection 
of  the  whole."  "  The  granite  is  differenced 
in  its  laws  only  by  the  more  or  less  of  heat 
from  the  river  that  wears  it  away.  The 
river,  as  it  flows,  resembles  the  air  that  flows 
over  it;  the  air  resembles  the  light  which 
traverses  it  with  more  subtile  currents ;  the 
light  resembles  the  heat  which  rides  with  it 
through  space.  Each  creature  is  only  a 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      29 

modification  of  the  other."  To  this  great 
fact  of  the  correlation  and  the  transmutation 
of  forces  he  returns  ever, —  and  to  the  truth 
beyond,  that  all  force  is  quickly  driven  where 
it  must  be  spoken  of  ideally,  in  terms  of 
thought,  of  will  and  intellect.  •  He  observes 
how  the  law  of  harmonic  sounds  reappears 
in  the  harmonic  colors.  He  dwells  with 
interest  on  the  fact  that  that  picture  which 
we  have  of  outer  nature  is  no  more  condi 
tioned  by  the  landscape  than  by  the  eye 
itself.  The  structure  of  this  it  is  which 
determines  outline,  color,  motion,  and  group 
ing.  Nature,  too,  is  always  herself  plus  our- 
self:  we  are  always  inextricably  interwoven 
as  one  element,  larger  or  smaller,  in  the  sum 
total  of  impression.  In  scientific  mood  we 
reduce  the  personal  element  to  the  vanishing 
point ;  but  in  naive  and  common  life  nature 
"always  wears  the  colors  of  the  spirit." 
"  The  same  scene  which  yesterday  breathed 
perfume  and  glittered  as  for  the  frolic  of  the 
nymphs  is  overspread  with  melancholy  to 
day.  To  a  man  laboring  under  calamity, 
the  heat  of  his  own  fire  hath  sadness  in  it. 
There  is  a  kind  of  contempt  of  the  landscape 


30       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

felt  by  him  who  has  just  lost  by  death  a  dear 
friend.  The  sky  is  less  grand  as  it  shuts 
down  over  less  worth  in  the  population." 

"  There  is  nothing  lucky  or  capricious 
in  these  analogies,"  says  Emerson.  "  This 
relation  between  the  mind  and  matter  is  not 
fancied  by  some  poet,  but  stands  in  the  will 
of  God,  and  so  is  free  to  be  known  by  all 
men.  It  appears  to  men,  or  it  does  not 
appear.  A  ray  of  relation  passes  from  all 
other  being  to  man  ;  and  neither  can  man  be 
understood  without  these  objects,  nor  these 
objects  without  man." 

As  with  the  intellectual,  so,  too,  with  the 
moral.  "  The  laws  of  moral  nature,"  says 
Emerson,  "  answer  to  those  of  matter  as  face 
to  face  in  a  glass."  This  thought  was*  funda 
mental  in  his  ethics,  and  he  lost  no  good 
occasion  to  emphasize  and  urge  it.  It  was 
part  of  that  grand  creed  which  he  spoke 
from  the  platform  of  the  Free  Religious 
Association  a  generation  ago  :  "  The  moral 
sentiment  speaks  to  every  man  the  law  after 
which  the  universe  was  made."  It  was  the 
last  word  of  the  famous  Harvard  address  of 
1838:  "I  look  for  the  new  Teacher,  that 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      31 

shall  follow  so  far  those  shining  laws,  that  he 
shall  see  them  come  full  circle ;  shall  see  the 
world  to  be  the  mirror  of  the  soul ;  shall  see 
the  identity  of  the  law  of  gravitation  with 
purity  of  heart;  and  shall  show  that  the 
Ought,  that  Duty,  is  one  thing  with  Science, 
with  Beauty,  and  with  Joy."  It  is  hinted  in 
"  The  Preacher,"  which,  read  to  the  Har 
vard  students  of  religion  forty  years  after  the 
first  address,  somehow  echoes  every  senti 
ment  of  that :  "  The  next  age  will  recog 
nize  the  true  eternity  of  the  law,  its  presence 
to  you  and  me,  its  equal  energy  in  what  is 
called  brute  nature  as  in  what  is  called  sacred 
history."  But  the  whole  thought  was  already 
firmly  grasped  and  clearly  formulated  in 
"  Nature."  "  All  things  are  moral,"  he  said 
here,  "  and  in  their  boundless  changes  have 
an  unceasing  reference  to  spiritual  nature." 
"  Every  natural  process  is  a  version  of  a 
moral  sentence.  The  moral  law  lies  at  the 
centre  of  nature  and  radiates  to  the  circum 
ference."  Every  chemical  change,  every 
change  of  vegetation,  every  animal  function, 
"  shall  hint  or  thunder  to  man  the  laws  of 
right  and  wrong  and  echo  the  Ten  Com- 


32       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

mandments."  He  cannot  doubt  that  the 
moral  sentiment  which  thus  scents  the  air, 
grows  in  the  grain,  and  impregnates  the 
waters  of  the  world  is  caught  from  them  by 
man.  "  Who  can  guess,"  he  says,  "  how 
much  firmness  the  sea-beaten  rock  has  taught 
the  fisherman  ?  how  much  tranquillity  has 
been  reflected  to  man  from  the  azure  sky, 
over  whose  unspotted  deeps  the  winds  for 
evermore  drive  flocks  of  stormy  clouds,  and 
leave  no  wrinkle  or  stain  ?  how  much  indus 
try  and  providence  and  affection  we  have 
caught  from  the  pantomime  of  brutes  ? " 
The  whole  chapter  upon  Discipline  is  iter 
ation  and  reiteration  of  this  thought.  Nature 
is  a  discipline,  he  says, —  school  alike  for  the 
understanding  and  for  morals.  As  Fichte 
said,  Nature  is  the  objectified  material  of 
duty. 

The  notion  is  abroad,  and  is  fashionable 
almost  to  the  point  of  orthodoxy, —  reports 
itself  perennially  in  the  newspaper  and  the 
omnibus, —  that  Idealism  is  unpractical, 
without  hands,  careless  of  fact,  even  inimical 
to  exact  science.  Renan  has  said  that  every 
position  has  so  much  to  say  for  itself  and  is 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      33 

so  plausible  from  some  point  that,  could  a 
man  live  long  enough  with  his  mind  fresh 
and  virile,  he  would  doubtless  champion 
successively  every  doctrine  and  belong  to 
every  sect.  Thus  for  each  one  of  us  may  be 
reserved  the  mumps-and-measles  period  of 
a  believed  antinomy  between  piety  and  com 
mon  sense  and  between  thought  and  fact. 
Lowell  well  said,  with  specific  reference  to 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  the  most  energetic  ship 
load  of  idealists  in  history,  that  "  men  anxious 
about  their  souls  have  not  been  by  any 
means  the  least  skilful  in  providing  for  the 
wants  of  the  body  "  ;  and  Switzerland,  Hol 
land,  Scotland,  and  England  say  their  various 
Amens.  "  To  a  sound  judgment,"  says 
Emerson,  "  the  most  abstract  truth  is  the 
most  practical."  The  word  of  your  rigorous 
and  vigorous  henchman  of  "  fact "  is  :  Come 
down  from  the  barren  heights  of  speculation 
and  out  of  the  clouds,  to  the  firm  ground  of 
the  physical  and  positive.  Shut  your  Kritik 
of  Reason  and  open  your  Palaeontology, 
that  so  we  may  have  some  reliable  and  useful 
knowledge.  In  like  manner  we  hear  sincere 
and  earnest  men  counsel,  Give  up  belief  in 


34        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

God,  that  you  may  economize  your  forces 
for  humanity  ;  give  up  believing  in  the  im 
mortal  nature  of  you,  that  so  you  may  con 
centrate  on  a  new  earth.  They  think  the 
law  of  parsimony  rules  the  soul,  instead  of 
that  other,  that  to  him  that  hath  shall  be 
given,  and  that  giving  is  getting  and  qualify 
ing  for  giving  more.  Stop  this  sending  of 
gospel  and  schoolmaster  to  Asia  and  Africa 
and  the  black  belt  of  Alabama,  they  say,  and 
attend  to  the  ignorance  and  squalor  round 
the  corner ;  and  they  ridicule  the  missionary 
society.  Yet  they  have  to  blush  more  than 
this  other  when  asked  for  the  census  of  their 
own  neighborhood  activities  and  self-sacrifices 
and  for  the  page  of  their  cash-book  which 
chronicles  their  dealings  with  the  local  vice. 

The  positivist's  appeal  to  the  idealist  to 
leave  his  idealism  to  strengthen  the  ranks  of 
reform  and  regenerate  society  is  irony's  ne 
plus  ultra.  Its  answer  is  Moses  and  the 
prophets ;  its  answer  is  Christ  and  the 
Church ;  its  answer  is  Luther  and  Calvin 
and  John  Knox ;  its  answer  is  Cromwell  and 
Milton  and  Vane,  Plymouth  Rock,  and  Bun 
ker  Hill ;  its  answer  is  Rousseau  and  Turgot, 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      35 

the  voice  of  Fichte  amidst  Napoleon's  drums, 
Cobden  and  the  Corn-law  Rhymer,  Mazzini 
and  Gladstone ;  its  answer  is  Garrison,  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation,  and  the  scaffold 
of  John  Brown ;  its  answer  is  the  Transcen 
dental  Movement  in  New  England.  Never 
in  New  England,  it  seems,  was  such  a  turn 
out  of  men  to  regenerate  society  as  in  those 
two  decades.  Each  man  inoculated  with  the 
"  new  views "  straightway  appears  with  a 
recipe  for  the  divine  commonwealth  in  his 
pocket.  It  shall  come  by  Brook  Farm,  by 
eating  potatoes,  by  temperance,  by  conven 
tions, —  a  perennial  Anniversary  Week, — 
but  it  shall  come  somehow.  The  labor  of 
those  men  and  women  for  a  new  earth  was 
as  energetic  as  their  faith  in  its  coming  was 
indefectible  and  buoyant.  But  for  their  labor 
and  their  faith  the  cause  of  reform  among 
us  would  be  infinitely  behind  where  it  is  to 
day.  On  the  whole,  it  seems  to  some  of  us, 
in  the  light  of  our  own  history  and  thought, 
that,  if  our  social  reformers  desiderate  in  the 
people  a  zeal  according  to  knowledge,  they 
had  better  pray  for  a  new  influx  of  Transcen 
dentalism  rather  than  seek  to  minimize  what 


36        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

we  have.  If  the  time  ever  should  come 
when  Transcendentalism  should  be  "  at  bay  " 
in  America, —  that  is  the  corner  where  some 
body  in  mild  glee  has  recently  been  locating 
it, —  then  Reform  would  simply  find  that  it 
had  killed  its  goose. 

The  same  answer  which  is  given  him  who 
seeks  to  antagonize  Idealism  and  philan 
thropy  stands  for  him  who  seeks  to  show 
a  conflict  between  speculation  and  science. 
The  answer  is  Aristotle  and  Bacon,  Des 
cartes  and  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Goethe  and  Em 
erson.  Kant,  and  not  Laplace,  was  the  true 
author  of  the  nebular  hypothesis ;  and  his 
name  will  ultimately  be  identified  with  it  as 
completely  as  Newton's  with  the  law  of 
gravitation.  He,  too,  distinctly  enunciated 
the  doctrine  —  although  he  called  it "  a  daring 
adventure  of  reason  "  —  of  the  descent  of  all 
organic  beings  from  a  common  original 
mother,  as  an  hypothesis  which  "  alone  is  in 
harmony  with  the  principle  of  the  mechan 
ism  of  nature,  without  which  a  science  of 
nature  is  altogether  impossible."  Goethe 
said,  "  Nothing  could  hinder  me  from  boldly 
maintaining  this  (  adventure  of  reason,'  as 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      37 

the  sage  of  Konigsberg  calls  it " ;  and 
Goethe's  own  "  Metamorphosis  of  Plants/' 
his  "  Metamorphosis  of  Animals,"  and  the 
whole  body  of  his  valuable  works  in  mor 
phology,  biology,  and  geology  are  clear  an 
ticipations,  and  much  more  than  anticipa 
tions,  of  Darwinism  and  our  evolution 
theory.  "  What  kind  of  God,"  said  Goethe, 
"  were  he  who  impelled  things  only  from 
outside,  and  let  the  universe  twirl  round  his 
finger?  God  moves  the  world  inwardly, 
cherishes  nature  in  himself,  himself  in  nat 
ure,  so  that  whatever  lives  and  works  and 
exists  in  him  never  misses  his  power  nor  his 
spirit."  And  again  :  "  All  'members  form 
themselves  according  to  eternal  laws,  and  the 
rarest  form  preserves  in  secret  the  primitive 
type.  The  form  determines  the  animal's 
mode  of  life,  while,  reciprocally,  the  mode  of 
life  reacts  powerfully  on  all  form." 

Some  have  raised  the  objection  that  these 
and  similar  passages  of  Goethe  are  no 
"  scientific  truths,"  but  only  poetical  or  rhe 
torical  flourishes  and  images ;  the  type  he 
meant  was  only  an  "  ideal  pro-type,"  no  real 
genealogical  form.  "  This  objection,"  says 


38        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Professor  Haeckel, —  and  the  answer,  no 
matter  what  the  philosophy  behind  it,  serves 
for  similar  objections  to  Emerson, —  "be 
trays  little  understanding  of  the  greatest 
German  genius.  He  who  is  acquainted  with 
Goethe's  thoroughly  objective  mode  of 
thought,  who  appreciates  his  thoroughly  liv 
ing  and  realistic  view  of  nature,  will  entertain 
no  doubt  that  under  that  c  type '  was  in 
tended  a  perfectly  real  descent  of  kindred 
organisms  from  common  genealogical  form." 
Emerson  himself,  in  describing  the  great 
changes  which  came  in  New  England 
thought  in  the  thirties  and  forties,  and  ex 
pressing  the  opinion  that  "  the  paramount 
source  of  the  religious  revolution  was  Mod 
ern  Science,"  pays  special  tribute  to  the  in 
fluence  of  Goethe  and  the  Germans  in  the 
matter.  "  Unexpected  aid  from  high  quarters 
came  to  the  iconoclasts.  The  German  poet 
Goethe  revolted  against  the  science  of  the 
day,  against  French  and  English  science, 
declared  war  against  the  great  name  of 
Newton,  proposed  his  own  new  and  simple 
optics  ;  in  botany,  his  simple  theory  of  meta 
morphosis, —  the  eye  of  a  leaf  is  all,  every 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      39 

part  of  the  plant  from  root  to  fruit  is  only  a 
modified  leaf,  the  branch  of  a  tree  is  nothing 
but  a  leaf  whose  serratures  have  become 
twigs.  He  extended  this  into  anatomy  and 
animal  life,  and  his  views  were  accepted. 
The  revolt  became  a  revolution.  Schelling 
and  Oken  introduced  their  ideal  natural 
philosophy ;  Hegel,  his  metaphysics,  and 
extended  it  to  civil  history.  The  result  in 
literature  and  the  general  mind  was  a  return 
to  law." 

This  truth,  that  the  great  pioneering  and 
revolutionizing  work  in  science  and  the 
study  of  nature  has  so  commonly  been  done 
by  those  who  have  approached  the  problem 
of  the  universe  on  the  thought-side,  is  cer 
tainly  interesting  and  significant.  To  the 
man  who  thinks,  not  at  all  a  strange  thing, 
yet  something  surely  worth  making  a  note_ 
of  by  the  stickler  for  "  facts."  "Man,"  says 
Emerson,  "  carries  the  world  in  his  head, 
the  whole  astronomy  and  chemistry  sus 
pended  in  a  thought.  Because  the  history 
of  nature  is  charactered  in  his  brain,  there 
fore  is  he  the  prophet  and  discoverer  of  her 
secrets.  Every  known  fact  in  natural  science 


40       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

was  divined  by  the  presentiment  of  some 
body,  before  it  was  actually  verified."  He 
quotes  with  pleasure  George  Herbert's 
quaint  and  pregnant  lines  upon  man's 
"  private  amity "  with  the  herbs  and  the 
stars.  He  might  have  quoted  those  lines  of 
Milton,  which  Channing  quotes  :  — 

"  One  Almighty  is,  from  whom 
All  things  proceed,  and  up  to  him  return, 
If  not  depraved  from  good,  created  all 
Such  to  perfection,  one  first  matter  all 
Indued  with  various  forms,  various  degrees 
Of  substance,  and,  in  things  that  live,  of  life  : 
But  more  refined,  more  spirituous  and  pure, 
As  nearer  to  him  placed  or  nearer  tending, 
Each  in  their  several  active  spheres  assigned, 
Till  body  up  to  spirit  work,  in  bounds 
Proportioned  to  each  kind.     So  from  the  root 
Springs  lighter  the  green  stalk,  from    thence  the 

leaves 

More  aery,  last  the  bright  consummate  flower 
Spirits  odorous  breathes  ;  flowers  and  their  fruit, 
Man's  nourishment,  by  gradual  scale  sublimed, 
To  vital  spirits  aspire,  to  animal, 
To  intellectual." 

Paradise  Lost,  Book  V.,  lines  469-485. 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     41 

The  following  Platonic  lines  from  Milton  he 

does  quote  :  — 

"  What  if  earth 

Be  but  the  shadow  of  Heaven,  and  things  therein 
Each    to   the    other  more  like  than    on    earth  is 
thought  ?  " 

But  nothing  could  illustrate  so  strikingly 
the  truth  that  the  method  of  thought  is 
the  method  of  nature  as  what  is  called 
the  "  Darwinism  "  of  Emerson  himself, —  the 
anticipations  and  clear  expression  everywhere 
of  that  view  of  development  which  our 
science  has  adopted  and  made  so  cardinal. 
Of  this  Darwinism  in  Emerson  much  has 
been  made,  yet  not  too  much.  Darwin 
ism,  as  we  have  already  noticed,  was  made 
the  very  motto  of  "  Nature,"  twenty  years 
before  "  The  Origin  of  Species  "  was  written. 
"  Nature "  is  full  of  Darwinism.  "It  is 
essential  to  a  true  theory  of  nature  and  of 
man,"  Emerson  said,  "  that  it  should  con 
tain  somewhat  progressive " ;  and  in  the 
essay  on  "  Fate  "  he  says,  "  No  statement 
of  the  universe  can  have  any  soundness 
which  does  not  admit  its  ascending  effort." 
His  quick  interest  in  the  questions  of  natural 


42        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

science  declares  itself  in  "  Nature  "  as  gen 
uinely  as  his  interest  in  the  soul  and  life. 
Curiously,  his  earliest  public  lectures  were 
upon  subjects  in  natural  history, — "  The 
Relation  of  Man  to  the  Globe,"  "  Water," 
etc.  "  Open  any  recent  journal  of  science," 
he  said  in  "  Nature,"  "  and  weigh  the  prob 
lems  suggested  concerning  Light,  Heat, 
Electricity,  Magnetism,  Physiology,  Geol 
ogy."  But  he  has  slight  regard  for  that 
physiology  or  physics  which  merely  con 
cerns  itself  with  particulars  and  heaps  up 
facts,  with  no  curiosity  or  thought  concern 
ing  relations,  tendency,  and  end.  "  Empiri 
cal  science,"  he  says,  "is  apt  to  cloud  the 
sight  and,  by  the  very  knowledge  of  func 
tions  and  processes,  to  bereave  the  student 
of  the  manly  contemplation  of  the  whole." 
"  There  are  far  more  excellent  qualities  in 
the  student,"  he  says,  "  than  preciseness  and 
infallibility.  It  is  not  so  pertinent  to  man 
to  know  all  the  individuals  of  the  animal 
kingdom  as  it  is  to  know  whence  and 
whereto  is  this  tyrannizing  unity  in  his 
constitution,  which  evermore  separates  and 
classifies  things,  endeavoring  to  reduce  the 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      43 

most  diverse  to  one  form.  When  I  be 
hold  a  rich  landscape,  it  is  less  to  my  pur 
pose  to  recite  correctly  the  order  and  super 
position  of  the  strata  than  to  know  why  all 
thought  of  multitude  is  lost  in  a  tranquil 
sense  of  unity.  I  cannot  greatly  honor 
minuteness  in  details  so  long  as  there  is  no 
hint  to  explain  the  relation  between  things 
and  thoughts  ;  no  ray  upon  the  metaphysics 
of  conchology,  of  botany,  of  the  arts,  to 
show  the  relation  of  the  forms  of  flowers, 
shells,  animals,  architecture,  to  the  mind, 
and  build  science  upon  ideas.'* 

The  exact  sciences  were  not  Emerson's 
favorite  field,  and  what  mathematics  he  had 
cost  him  "  hours  of  melancholy."  But  he 
had  that  primary  merit  of  the  scientific  man 
which  consists  in  fronting  fact  and  truth 
confidently  and  without  reserve,  in  declin 
ing  anxiety  about  any  immediate  inconsis 
tencies  which  appear  during  research  and 
change,  and  in  refusing  to  accept  or  approve 
as  known  anything  which  is  not  known. 
"  The  moment  you  putty  and  plaster  your 
expressions  to  make  them  hang  together,"  he 
said  to  a  young  friend,  "  you  have  begun 


44        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

a  weakening  process.  Take  it  for  granted 
the  truths  will  harmonize ;  and,  as  for  the 
falsities  and  mistakes,  they  will  speedily  die 
of  themselves."  "  I  do  not  wish,"  he  said 
to  Frederika  Bremer,  "  that  people  should 
pretend  to  know  or  to  believe  more  than 
they  really  do  know  and  believe."  Apply 
ing  this  to  the  discussion  of  immortality, — 
"  we  carry  the  pledges  of  this  in  our  own 
breast,"  —  he  maintained  that  "we  cannot 
say  in  what  form  or  in  what  manner  our 
existence  will  be  continued."  "  He  is  faith 
ful,"  comments  Miss  Bremer,  "to  the  law 
in  his  own  breast,  and  speaks  out  the  truth 
which  he  inwardly  recognizes.  He  does 
right.  By  this  means  he  will  prepare  the 
way  for  a  more  true  comprehension  of  re 
ligion  and  of  life." 

Emerson  remarks  upon  "that  wonderful 
congruity  which  subsists  between  man  and 
the  world  —  of  which  he  is  the  lord,  not  be 
cause  he  is  the  most  subtile  inhabitant,  but 
because  he  is  its  head  and  heart,  and  finds 
something  of  himself  in  every  great  and 
small  thing."  This  view,  thus  clear  and 
explicit  at  the  very  beginning,  in  the  pages 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     45 

of  "  Nature,"  becomes  ever  more  pro 
nounced  and  prominent  in  his  maturer 
thought.  Half  a  dozen  years  later  he  says  : 
"  We  can  point  nowhere  to  anything  final, 
but  tendency  appears  on  all  hands ;  planet, 
system,  constellation,  total  nature  is  grow 
ing  like  a  field  of  maize  in  July,  is  be 
coming  somewhat  else.  The  embryo  does 
not  more  strive  to  be  man  than  yonder  burr 
of  light  we  call  a  nebula  tends  to  be  a 
ring,  a  comet,  a  globe,  and  a  parent  of  new 
suns."  This  process  of  evolution,  he  says, 
"  publishes  itself  in  creatures,  reaching  from 
particles  to  spicula,  through  transformation 
on  transformation,  to  the  highest  symme 
tries,  arriving  at  consummate  results  with 
out  a  shock  or  a  leap.  .  .  .  How  far  off  is 
the  trilobite,  how  far  the  quadruped  !  How 
inconceivably  remote  is  man !  All  duly 
arrive,  and  then  race  after  race  of  men.  It 
is  a  long  way  from  granite  to  oyster ;  farther 
yet  to  Plato,  and  the  preaching  of  the  im 
mortality  of  the  soul.  Yet  all  must  come, 
as  surely  as  the  first  atom  has  two  sides." 
This,  note,  twenty  years  before  men  heard 
of  Darwinism.  "  In  ignorant  ages,"  says 


46       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Emerson,  "it  was  common  to  vaunt  the 
human  superiority  by  underrating  the  in 
stinct  of  other  animals.  Better  discern 
ment  finds  that  the  only  difference  is  of 
less  and  more/'  Again,  fc  'Tis  a  long  scale 
from  the  gorilla  to  the  gentleman, —  from 
the  gorilla  to  Plato,  Newton,  Shakespeare, 
—  to  the  sanctities  of  religion,  to  the  re 
finements  of  legislation,  the  summits  of 
science,  art,  and  poetry.  The  beginnings 
are  slow  and  infirm,  but  'tis  an  always  ac 
celerated  march." 

Passages  of  this  sort  could  of  course  be 
multiplied  indefinitely.  The  reference  in 
"  Bacchus  "  to  the  ascent  of  life  from  form 
to  form  still  remains  incomparable,  as  Mr. 
Stedman  has  observed,  for  terseness  and 
poetic  illumination :  — 

"  I,  drinking  this, 
Shall  hear  far  Chaos  talk  with  me ; 
Kings  unborn  shall  walk  with  me  ; 
And  the  poor  grass  shall  plot  and  plan 
What  it  will  do  when  it  is  man." 

Lines  in  "Woodnotes"  put  the  same 
in  different  phrase.  Perhaps  the  most  defi- 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     47 

nite  and  sufficient  statement  of  the  doctrine 
by  Emerson  is  that  in  the  second  essay  on 
Plato.  "  Modern  science,"  he  said  here, — 
this  was  ten  years  before  Darwin, —  "  by  the 
extent  of  its  generalizations  has  learned  to 
indemnify  the  student  of  man  for  the  de 
fects  of  individuals,  by  tracing  growth  and 
ascent  in  races,  and,  by  the  simple  expedi 
ent  of  lighting  up  the  vast  background, 
generates  a  feeling  of  complacency  and  hope. 
The  human  being  has  the  saurian  and  the 
plant  in  his  rear.  His  arts  and  sciences, 
the  easy  issue  of  his  brain,  look  glorious 
when  prospectively  beheld  from  the  distant 
brain  of  ox,  crocodile,  and  fish.  It  seems 
as  if  nature,  in  regarding  the  geologic  night 
behind  her,  when,  in  five  or  six  millen 
niums,  she  has  turned  out  five  or  six  men, 
as  Homer,  Phidias,  Menu,  and  Columbus, 
was  nowise  discontented  with  the  result. 
These  samples  attested  the  virtue  of  the 
tree.  These  were  a  clear  amelioration  of 
trilobite  and  saurus,  and  a  good  basis  for 
further  proceeding.  With  this  artist,  time 
and  space  are  cheap,  and  she  is  insensible 
to  what  you  say  of  tedious  preparation. 


48       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

She  waited  tranquilly  the  flowing  periods 
of  palaeontology  for  the  hour  to  be  struck 
when  man  should  arrive." 

"  It  is  a  misconception,"  says  John  Morley, 
"  to  pretend  that  Emerson  was  a  precursor 
of  the  Darwinian  theory"  ;  and  he  emphasizes 
the  special  character  of  Darwin's  scientific 
hypothesis.  "  Evolution,  as  a  possible  ex 
planation  of  the  ordering  of  the  universe," 
he  says,  "  is  a  great  deal  older  than  either 
Emerson  or  Darwin."  None  knew  that 
better  than  Emerson  himself;  and  before 
he  was  twenty  years  old  he  wrote  of  "  the 
circumstance  which  almost  invariably  attends 
the  promulgation  of  a  philosophical  theory, 
—  that  authors  start  up  to  prove  its  antiquity, 
and  that  it  is  the  identical  theory  which 
Pythagoras,  Plato,  or  Epicurus  propounded 
before."  The  point  of  interest  here  is 
that  Emerson  spoke  about  evolution  in 
entirely  new  phrase ;  and  it  was  no  mere 
"good  fortune"  by  which  his  strong  propo 
sitions  harmonize  with  "the  new  and  most 
memorable  drift  of  science  which  set  in  by 
his  side,"  as  Mr.  Morley  clearly  recognizes 
they  do.  It  was  the  "  fatal  gift  of  penetra- 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     49 

tion  "  which  enabled  him  to  see  and  to  pro 
claim  early  and  in  universals  that  which 
was  in  the  air  and  which  Darwin  presently 
should  avouch  in  particulars. 

If  Idealism  be  a  true  philosophy,  then  it 
was  but  natural  and  regular  that  Emerson 
should  see  and  say  this  betimes.  If  Dar 
winism  be  a  true  theory  of  the  origin  of 
species  and  the  descent  of  man,  then  this  in 
sight  and  conclusion  bear  notable  witness  to 
the  primary  virtue  and  validity  of  Emerson's 
method.  Indeed,  if  we  consider,  upon  what 
presupposition  are  this  insight  and  conclu 
sion,  if  they  be  true,  so  likely  and  so  clear  as 
upon  his  ? 

"The  possibility  of  interpretation,"  he 
says,  "  lies  in  the  identity  of  the  observer 
with  the  observed.  Each  material  thing 
has  its  celestial  side ;  has  its  translation, 
through  humanity,  into  the  spiritual  and  nec 
essary  sphere."  "  The  reason  why  man 
knows  about  them  is  that  he  is  of  them ;  he 
has  just  come  out  of  nature,  or  from  being  a 
part  of  that  thing."  cc  I  announce  the  good 
of  being  interpenetrated  by  the  mind  that 
made  nature  ;  this  benefit,  namely,  that  it 


50       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

can  understand  nature,  which  it  made  and 
maketh.  Nature  is  good,  but  intellect  is 
better :  as  the  law-giver  is  before  the  law- 
receiver."  In  religion  it  is  the  thought  of 
what  may  best  be  named  the  humanity  of 
God.  With  sympathy  he  quotes  the  word 
of  George  Fox,  that,  "  though  he  read  of 
Christ  and  God,  he  knew  them  only  from 
the  like  spirit  in  his  own  soul."  The 
human  is  the  door  to  the  divine. 

Intellect  is  the  supernatural,  the  creator 
and  the  sap  of  nature.  Intellect  is  the  divine, 
it  is  the  mind  in  man.  "  Man  must  look  at 
nature  with  a  supernatural  eye,"  says  Emer 
son.  "  Every  natural  fact  is  an  emanation. 
Not  the  cause,  but  an  ever  novel  effect, 
nature  descends  always  from  above.  The 
beauty  of  these  fair  objects  is  imparted  into 
them  from  a  metaphysical  and  eternal  spring. 
In  all  animal  and  vegetable  forms,  no  chem 
istry,  no  mechanics,  can  account  for  the 
facts ;  but  a  mysterious  principle  of  life  must 
be  assumed,  which  not  only  inhabits  the 
organ,  but  makes  the  organ."  This  is  the 
metaphysics  of  evolution,  its  philosophy, 
with  Emerson. 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      51 

And  what  of  man  in  nature, —  what  of  the 
mind  ?  We  are  brought  by  this  word  to 
Emerson's  point  of  view.  Man  is  the  pro 
jection  of  God  in  the  self-conscious.  "The 
foundations  of  man,"  says  Emerson,  "are 
not  in  matter,  but  in  spirit " ;  and  u  the 
element  of  spirit  is  eternity."  <c  Man  pre 
tends  to  give  account  of  himself  to  himself, 
but  at  last  what  has  he  to  recite  but  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  Life  not  to  be  described 
or  known  otherwise  than  by  possession  ? 
What  account  can  he  give  of  his  essence  more 
than  so  it  was  to  be  ?  The  royal  reason,  the 
Grace  of  God,  seems  the  only  description  of 
our  multiform  but  ever  identical  fact." 

"A  God-intoxicated  man  "  is  a  term  which 
might  be  applied  to  Emerson  as  justly  as  it 
was  applied  to  Spinoza.  It  is  an  impress 
ive  account  which  Mr.  Woodbury  gives  of 
the  meditation  and  discussion  up  under  the 
shadow  of  Greylock,  in  which  Emerson,  after 
a  long  pause,  exclaimed,  lifting  his  head, 
"  God  ?  It  is  all  God  !  "  — marvelling  how 
any  thinker  contemplating  the  universe  could 
hold  otherwise.  But  he  was  not  a  pantheist, 
although  Theodore  Parker  was  quite  wrong 


52       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

in  saying  that  "  no  man  is  farther  from  it.*' 
There  is  almost  no  great  modern  religious 
thinker  in  whom  the  pantheistic  element  is 
so  large  ;  but  he  is  always  the  theist,  always 
thoughtful  of  the  personality,  the  conscious 
ness,  and  the  response.  His  pages  throb 
with  multiplied  expressions  of  it.  Has  any 
believer  in  the  personality  of  God,  well  asks 
Whipple  in  one  of  his  Emerson  essays, 
ever  hit  upon  a  better  definition  than  "  Con 
scious  Law/'  in  that  inspired  line  in  "  Wood- 
notes," —  "  Conscious  Law  is  King  of  kings  ?" 
Indeed  there  is  not  in  all  of  Emerson's 
pages  a  loftier,  more  poetic,  or  more  philo 
sophic  expression  of  his  conception  of  evolu 
tion  in  its  divine  genesis  and  eternal  energy 
than  the  page  which  ends  with  this  great 
line. 

"  I  praise  with  wonder,"  he  says,  "  this  great 
reality,  this  Supreme  Presence,  which  seems 
to  drown  all  things  in  the  deluge  of  its  light. 
What  man,  seeing  this,  can  lose  it  from 
his  thoughts,  or  entertain  a  meaner  subject? 
The  entrance  of  this  into  his  mind  seems  to 
be  the  birth  of  man.  We  cannot  describe 
the  natural  history  of  the  soul,  but  we  know 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     53 

that  it  is  divine.  I  cannot  tell  if  these  won 
derful  qualities  which  house  to-day  in  this 
mortal  frame  shall  ever  reassemble  in  equal 
activity  in  a  similar  frame,  or  whether  they 
have  before  had  a  natural  history  like  that 
of  this  body ;  but  this  one  thing  I  know, 
that  these  qualities  did  not  now  begin  to  ex 
ist,  cannot  be  sick  with  my  sickness,  nor 
buried  in  any  grave ;  but  that  they  circulate 
through  the  Universe  :  before  the  world  was, 
they  were.  Nothing  can  bar  them  out,  or 
shut  them  in ;  they  penetrate  the  ocean  and 
land,  space  and  time,  form  and  essence, 
and  hold  the  key  to  universal  nature.  I 
draw  from  this  faith  courage  and  hope.  All 
things  are  known  to  the  soul.  It  is  not  to 
be  surprised  by  any  communication.  Noth 
ing  can  be  greater  than  it." 

"  Every  scripture  is  to  be  interpreted  by 
the  same  spirit  which  gave  it  forth/' —  this, 
observes  Emerson,  is  the  fundamental  law 
of  criticism.  And  is  it  not  apparent  that 
all  man's  efforts  to  interpret  the  universe  are 
at  once  vain  and  inexplicable,  unless  it  be 
that  he  himself  is  of  the  same  spirit  which 
gave  forth  the  universe,  and  eternally  gives 


54       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

forth  ?  The  fact  that  man  "  doth  philoso 
phize,  and  must,"  must  ever  ask  the  ques 
tions  which  have  their  answers  in  infinity,  is 
the  blazing  evidence  of  his  oneness  with  the 
Mind  by  which  the  worlds  are  and  were 
created. 

And  that  which  is  implied  by  speculation 
is  also  vouched  by  freedom  and  the  infinite 
transformation  wrought  by  Will.  "The 
world,"  says  Emerson,  "yields  itself  passive 
to  the  educated  Will."  "  From  the  child's 
successive  possession  of  his  several  senses  up 
to  the  hour  when  he  saith,  '  Thy  will  be 
done ! '  he  is  learning  the  secret,  that  he  can 
reduce  under  his  will,  not  only  particular 
events,  but  great  classes,  nay,  the  whole 
series  of  events,  and  so  conform  all  facts  to 
his  character."  Fate  is  unpenetrated  cause. 
The  water  drowns  ship  and  sailor,  like  a 
grain  of  dust;  but  learn  to  swim,  trim 
your  bark,  and  the  wave  which  drowned  it 
will  carry  it.  "  Steam,  till  the  other  day, 
was  the  devil  which  we  dreaded;  but 
Worcester,  Watt,  and  Fulton  bethought 
themselves  that,  where  was  power,  was  not 
devil,  but  was  God.  Could  he  lift  pots  and 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      55 

roofs  so  handily,  he  was  the  workman  they 
were  in  search  of.  The  opinion  of  the  mill 
ion  was  the  terror  of  the  world  ;  and  it  was 
attempted  to  hold  it  down  with  a  layer  of 
soldiers,  over  that  a  layer  of  lords,  and  a 
king  on  the  top.  But  the  Fultons  and  Watts 
of  politics,  by  satisfying  the  million,  have 
made  of  this  terror  the  most  harmless  and 
energetic  form  of  a  State."  "  Every  solid  in 
the  universe  is  ready  to  become  fluid  on  the 
approach  of  the  mind ;  and  the  power  to 
flux  it  is  the  measure  of  the  mind.  .  .  .  One 
after  another,  man's  victorious  thought 
comes  up  with  and  reduces  all  things,  until 
the  world  becomes,  at  last,  only  a  realized 
will  —  the  double  of  the  man." 

"  Intellect   annuls   Fate,"  says  Emerson. 

>o  far  as  a  man  thinks,  he  is  free."  I  g& 
find  it  difficult  to  understand,  in  spite  of  the 
unrelieved  determinism  that  to-day  domin 
ates  and  charms  so  many  moralists  and  phil 
osophic  men,  how  one  can  see  this  doctrine 
of  freedom  challenged  without  jealousy,  so 
fundamental  does  it  appear  to  the  intellectual 
process  and  to  the  interpretation  and  the 
very  fact  of  the  moral  life.  The  vehemence 


56        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  the  denial  of  free  will  by  Luther  and  Cal 
vin  and  many  great  religious  minds  is  in 
deed  known  to  us  ;  and  the  subtlety  and 
energy  of  the  theologians'  arguments  we  rec 
ognize  and  deeply  feel.  They  would  em 
phasize  Providence,  they  would  humble 
themselves  entirely,  they  would  empty 
themselves  of  all  claim  to  merit,  and  know 
themselves  only  as  chosen  instruments 
through  which  God  works  his  purposes. 
But  freedom  makes  all  the  reverence  and 
humility  and  grace  and  sonship  and  disciple- 
ship  greater,  and  not  less.  Indeed,  if  we 
will  ponder,  are  these  even  possible  save  as 
our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  God's  ?  I 
lately  read  a  paper  by  a  thoughtful  man,  in 
opposition  to  the  principle  that  the  freedom 
of  the  will  is  the  corner-stone  of  ethics,  and 
marvelled  at  the  argument,  to  which  Grote 
and  Voltaire  and  John  Fiske  were  all  made 
to  contribute.  "  The  free  agent "  was  gro 
tesquely  defined,  in  the  language  of  Grote, 
as  "  one  who  can  neither  feel  himself  account 
able  nor  be  rendered  accountable."  "  If  the 
volition  of  agents  be  not  influenced  by 
motives,"  it  was  said, —  and  who  of  us  would 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      57 

dream  of  denying  so  trivial  a  truism  ? —  "  the 
whole  machinery  of  law  becomes  unavailing, 
and  punishment  a  purposeless  infliction  of 
pain."  "  If,  when  a  robber  is  executed,"  so 
Voltaire  was  cited  here,  "  his  accomplice,  who 
sees  him  suffer,  has  the  liberty  of  not  being 
frightened  at  the  punishment,  he  will  go 
from  the  foot  of  the  scaffold  to  assassinate 
on  the  high-road  ;  if,  struck  with  horror,  he 
experiences  an  insurmountable  terror,  the 
punishment  of  his  companion  will  become 
useful  to  him,  and  moreover  prove  to  so 
ciety  that  his  will  is  not  free.'*  "  Substitute 
for  the  unmeaning  phrase,  c  freedom  of  the 
will/"  Mr.  Fiske  was  quoted  as  saying, 
"  the  accurate  phrase,  c  lawlessness  of  vo 
lition,'  and  the  theory  already  looks  less 
plausible."  "  To  write  history,"  so  Mr. 
Fiske  was  also  quoted,  "  on  any  method  fur 
nished  by  the  free-will  doctrine  would  be 
utterly  impossible."  Surely,  one  could  but 
say,  Mr.  Fiske  could  never  have  said  this, 
save  in  his  apprentice  period.  The  expres 
sion  does  occur  in  his  "  Cosmic  Philosophy." 
But  the  unfortunate  word  gives  no  adequate 
idea  of  the  purpose  of  the  chapter,  which  is 


58        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

to  show  the  lawful  power  of  motives.  To 
whoever  is  inclined  to  look  upon  the  reason 
ing  of  Buckle  as  "equally  legitimate  and 
conclusive  with  that  of  Darwin,"  another 
contention  of  the  critic,  Mr.  Fiske's  own 
essay  upon  Buckle's  fallacies  may  be  com 
mended  ;  and,  surely,  the  history  of  America, 
which  Mr.  Fiske  has  done  so  much  to  illu 
minate,  can  be  based  on  no  other  doctrine 
than  that  of  freedom.  "  Does  the  reading 
of  history  make  us  fatalists  ? "  says  Emer 
son.  "  What  courage  does  not  the  opposite 
opinion  show !  A  little  whim  of  will  to  be 
free  gallantly  contending  against  the  universe 
of  chemistry." 

"  Substitute  the  accurate  term  lawlessness 
for  freedom,  and  the  theory  already  looks 
less  plausible  !  "  Substitute  lawlessness  for 
freedom!  Substitute  Preston  Brooks  for 
Charles  Sumner,  substitute  Alcibiades  for 
Plato,  and  Judas  for  Saint  John  !  The  con 
fusion  is  a  monstrous  one.  Is  the  lawless 
State  the  free  State, —  or  the  State  where 
law  is  perfect  and  supreme  ?  Who  is  the 
free  citizen  ?  Is  it  a  Lincoln  or  a  Glad 
stone,  whose  speech  on  each  month's  prob- 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      59 

lem  we  confidently  prophesy,  by  knowledge 
of  the  self-determined  law  of  his  mind, —  or 
is  it  the  Jingo  of  the  music-hall,  whose 
whim  next  week  or  the  week  after  is  quite 
incalculable  ?  Is  it  the  obedient  citizen,  or 
the  capricious  and  he  who  does  not  feel 
himself  accountable  ?  As  most  of  us  under 
stand  it,  this  is  he  who  finds  himself  in 
jail. 

Voltaire's  identification  of  freedom  with 
caprice,  with  insulation  from  influences,  from 
motives  and  causality  is  a  trivial  thinking. 
Carlyle's  judgment,  that  "  there  is  not  one 
great  thought  in  all  Voltaire's  six  and  thirty 
quartos,"  was  a  judgment  too  severe ;  but 
few  will  not  own  that  he  was  "  shallow " 
upon  occasion,  when  they  find  him  ad 
ducing  the  fact  that  the  sight  of  a  hanging 
frightens  a  would-be  murderer  as  a  proof 
that  the  will  is  not  free !  This  line  of 
thought  —  and  it  is  common,  indeed  —  pro 
ceeds  upon  failure  to  analyze  and  define 
motive.  Stocks  and  stones  have  no  motives, 
and  beasts  and  idiots  next  to  none.  Mo 
tives  multiply,  grow  definite,  and  grow 
imperative  precisely  as  freedom  grows  ;  and 


60       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  completer  the  freedom,  the  greater  the 
contribution  of  the  mind  to  its  own  motive. 
My  motive  is  not  apart  from  me :  it  is  of 
me.  I  share  in  the  creation  of  my  motive, 
and  this  more  and  more  with  the  evolution 
of  my  freedom.  "  Will,  pure  and  perceiv 
ing,'*  says  Emerson,  £<  is  not  wilfulness. 
When  a  man,  through  stubborness,  insists 
to  do  this  or  that,  something  absurd  or 
whimsical,  only  because  he  will,  he  is  weak ; 
he  blows  with  his  lips  against  the  tempest." 
"If  we  thought  men  were  free  in  the  sense 
that  in  a  single  exception  one  fantastical 
will  could  prevail  over  the  law  of  things, 
it  were  all  one  as  if  a  child's  hand  could  pull 
down  the  sun/'  "  Let  us  build  altars,"  he 
said,  "  to  the  Beautiful  Necessity,  which 
rudely  or  softly  educates  man  to  the  percep 
tion  that  there  are  no  contingencies  —  that 
Law  rules  throughout  existence."  "If  we 
give  it  the  high  sense  in  which  the  poets  use 
it,  even  thought  itself  is  not  above  Fate : 
that,  too,  must  act  according  to  eternal  laws, 
and  all  that  is  wilful  and  fantastic  in  it  is  in 
opposition  to  its  fundamental  essence." 
Man  may  choose  as  he  will,  but  he  chooses 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      61 

the  wrong  at  his  peril,  his  error  or  his  sin 
in  no  wise  earning  deference  from  the  moral 
nature  of  things  ;  and  the  problem  set  to 
man  is  to  gladly  will  the  universal,  not  to 
do  somehow  that  which  gravitation  and  the 
Ought  command, —  that  he  must  do  some 
how,  or  be  ground  up, —  but  to  do  it  volun 
tarily,  in  the  perceiving  of  its  infallible  ex 
cellence  and  oneness  with  the  deep  base  of 
the  life.  "Thank  God,"  said  Lessing, — 
he  who  said,  in  its  place,  that  deep  correla 
tive  word,  "  No  man  must  must,"  —  "  that 
I  must,  must  do  the  right."  Herein  only 
is  freedom, —  in  obedience,  in  harmony  with 
right.  "  The  law  of  liberty,"  says  Saint  Paul. 
"  Our  wills  are  ours,"  says  Tennyson,  in  his 
line,  "to  make  them  thine."  "The  last 
lesson  in  life,"  says  Emerson,  in  "  Worship," 
using  almost  Spinoza's  word,  "  is  a  vol 
untary  obedience,  a  necessitated  freedom." 
"Morals,"  he  says,  "is  the  direction  of  the 
will  on  universal  ends."  But  "  morals  im 
plies  freedom  and  will.  The  will  constitutes 
the  man." 

Mr.  Cabot  states  Emerson's  position  in  ' 
these  words :  "  When  man  submits  his  will 


62       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

to  the  Divine  inspiration,  he  becomes  a 
creator  in  the  finite.  If  he  is  disobedient, 
if  he  would  be  something  in  himself,  he  finds 
all  things  hostile  and  incomprehensible. "  I 
quote  this  passage  especially  because  it  is 
one  which  an  accomplished  English  critic, 
Mr.  John  M.  Robertson,  in  an  acute  and 
valuable  essay  upon  Emerson,  marred  by 
some  curious  complacencies  about  theism 
and  atheism,  singles  out  as  the  acme  of  in 
consistency.  He  accepts  it  as  truly  repre 
senting  Emerson,  but  exclaims,  "  How  in 
the  name  of  reason  can  a  human  phenome 
non  be  disobedient  to  the  Universal  Will  ?  " 
The  question  itself  ignores  the  central  and 
fundamental  fact  in  Emerson's  conception  of 
man.  Man  is  not  a  phenomenon ;  and,  if 
we  must  choose  between  calling  the  mind 
primarily  intellect  or  will,  we  must  say 
will.  "  The  free-will  or  Godhead  of  men  " 
Emerson  speaks  of.  A  phenomenon  can 
be  neither  dutiful  nor  undutiful ;  and  the 
obedience  of  a  machine  does  not  constitute 
morality,  but  only  the  obedience  of  will,  and 
that  precisely  because  it  can  decline  obedi 
ence.  Morals  implies  freedom,  Emerson 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      63 

says,  as  the  immediate  consciousness  and 
common  sense  of  men  have  said  from  the 
beginning,  and  the  profoundest  philosophy 
from  Plato  and  Aristotle  on  to  Emerson. 
We  need  no  Kant  to  prove  it  by  formulas 
of  metaphysics.  What  else  mean  the  words 
responsible,  blame,  retribution,  indignation  ? 
Why  else  this  difference  in  kind  between 
my  feeling  toward  this  stinging  viper  and 
that  toward  this  selfish  coward  or  false 
friend  ?  Aristotle's  simple  old  argument, 
in  his  cc  Ethics,"  for  the  free  will  and  con 
sequent  responsibility  of  man,  by  appeal 
first  to  our  own  consciousness,  and  sec 
ondly  to  the  fact  that  in  society  we  treat 
each  other  as  free  agents,  and  must  do 
it,  whatever  our  theory,  has  never  been 
laid  nor  transcended  yet,  and  is  not  likely 
to  be  in  a  hurry.  But  I  know  of  no  pro- 
founder  word  upon  this  old  knot  of  freedom 
and  necessity  than  that  of  Emerson,  in  the 
essay  on  "  Fate/'  I  think  of  no  word  so 
profound  as  this,  no  metaphysic  of  ethics  so 
great, —  a  system  of  ethics  it  is  in  fosse, — 
save,  in  somewhat,  that  of  Kant's  great 
Kritik.  A  complete  survey  of  Emerson's 


64       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

philosophy  must  give  a  cardinal  place  to 
his  ethics.  I  do  not  here  develop  at  length 
the  ethical  side,  because  I  have  done  it 
elsewhere.*  I  know  of  no  other  thinker  who 
so  luminously  points  out  the  way  to  the 
solution  of  the  sundry  antinomies,  their 
reconciliation  in  a  higher  synthesis,  as  Emer 
son.  Freedom  and  necessity,  unity  and 
personality,  individualism  and  common 
wealth,  transcendence  and  immanence, — as 
we  come  into  "  intimater  intimacy  "  with  the 
mind  of  Emerson,  the  old  puzzles  puzzle 
less  and  less,  and  we  learn  to  verify  and 
chart  what  he  discovers  and  declares.  No 
where  is  the  reconciling  synthesis  more  im 
pressive  or  more  useful,  more  necessary  for 
these  times,  than  in  the  field  of  ethics.  The 
reconciliation  is  between  the  evolution  of 
institutions  and  the  categorical  imperative, 
between,  if  we  please,  Herbert  Spencer  and 
Immanuel  Kant.  Emerson  fronts  a  kinder 
and  more  co-operant  universe  than  Kant. 
Morals,  he  said  while  yet  a  mere  boy,  and 
in  ever  firmer  accent  with  the  years,  consti- 

*  Address   upon    "Emerson's  Ethics,"  published  in  the  volume 
of  Concord  Lectures  upon  "The  Genius  and  Character  of  Emerson." 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      65 

tutes  the  "  health  integrity  "  of  the  universe ; 
and  morals  is  the  health  of  the  soul,  the 
activity  befitting  and  commanding  its  nature. 
The  moral  development  of  man  is  his  proc 
ess,  prompted  by  inspiration  and  impera 
tive  from  within  and  from  without,  toward 
realization  and  obedience  of  the  central  law 
of  his  own  being,  in  which  obedience  he 
finds  freedom  and  efficiency  and  himself. 
The  "  data  of  ethics  "  and  sundry  observa 
tions  of  most  of  the  moral  philosophers  of 
evolution  would  be  to  the  mind  of  Emer 
son  mere  notes  of  results  and  processes,  with 
the  purpose  and  dynamics  still  left  to  be 
explained.  The  first  principles  of  the  Kant 
ian  ethics,  the  three  cardinal  doctrines  of 
the  Kritik  of  Practical  Reason,  never  received 
such  powerful  summary  statement  as  in 
Emerson's  famous  lines  :  — 

u  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  I can" 

Here  is  the  categorical  imperative ;   and 
here    the    assurance,     Thou    canst,    because 


66       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

thou  shalt, — because  thou  oughtest.  Obligation 
measures  and  defines  capacity  and  freedom ; 
and  the  absoluteness  of  the  obligation  il 
lumines  and  defines  the  two  great  presup 
positions, —  the  grandeur  of  the  eternal  nat 
ure  thus  commanded,  and  the  completeness 
of  the  divine  support  and  guarantee. 

Nature  is  no  sentimentalist  to  Emerson. 
He  believes  in  no  "pistareen  Providence, 
which,  whenever  the  good  man  wants  a 
dinner,  makes  that  somebody  shall  knock  at 
his  door  and  leave  a  half-dollar."  It  is  of 
no  use,  he  says,  to  "  dress  up  that  terrific 
benefactor  in  the  clean  shirt  and  white  neck 
cloth  of  a  student  in  divinity."  The  world 
"  will  not  mind  drowning  a  man  or  woman." 
Nor  is  there  any  underrating  of  external 
influence  or  circumstance  by  Emerson. 
"  Every  spirit  makes  its  house,"  he  says ; 
"  but  afterwards  the  house  confines  the 
spirit."  "  How  shall  a  man  escape  from 
his  ancestors  ?  "  "  At  the  corner  of  the 
street  you  read  the  possibility  of  each  pas 
senger,  in  the  facial '  angle."  "  A  crudity  in 
the  blood  will  appear  in  the  argument ;  a 
hump  in  the  shoulder  will  appear  in  the 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      67 

speech  and  handiwork."  You  cannot  make 
a  poet  of  "  that  little  fatty  face,  pig-eye,  and 
squat  form."  "  The  election  often  goes, 
probably,  by  avoirdupois  weight  —  and  it 
might  be  speedier  to  take  the  parties  to  the 
hay-scales  than  to  the  ballot-box."  Circum 
stance,  nature,  the  thick  skull,  is  half. 
"  The  book  of  Nature  is  the  book  of  Fate." 
Whatever  limits  us  we  call  Fate  ;  and  lim 
itation  runs  through  entire  nature.  Fate 
is  organization  tyrannizing  over  character. 
"  But  if  Fate  is  so  prevailing,  man  also," 
says  Emerson,  "  is  part  of  it,  and  can  con 
front  fate  with  fate.  History  is  the  action 
and  reaction  of  these  two  —  Nature  and 
Thought.  Man  cannot  blink  the  free  will. 
To  hazard  the  contradiction,  freedom  is 
necessary.  If  you  please  to  plant  yourself 
on  the  side  of  Fate,  and  say  Fate  is  all ; 
then  we  say,  a  part  of  Fate  is  the  freedom 
of  man.  Intellect  annuls  Fate.  So  far  as  a 
man  thinks,  he  is  free.  He  who  sees 
through  the  design  presides  over  it,  and 
must  will  that  which  must  be.  If  the  wall 
remain  adamant,  it  accuses  the  want  of 
thought.  The  one  serious  and  formidable 


68        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

thing  in  nature  is  a  will."  "  'Tis  written  on 
the  gate  of  heaven,"  he  quotes  from  Persian 
Hafiz,  " f  Woe  unto  him  who  suffers  him 
self  to  be  betrayed  by  Fate  ! '" 

"  It  is  wholesome  to  man  to  look  not  at 
Fate,"  Emerson  says,  "  but  the  other  way : 
the  practical  view  is  the  other."  This  takes 
us  back  to  that  place  in  "  Nature  "  where  he 
declared  the  advantage  of  the  ideal  theory 
to  be  that  it  presents  the  world  in  precisely 
that  view  which  is  most  desirable  to  the 
mind,  the  view  approved  alike  by  philoso 
phy  and  by  virtue.  And  it  indicates  the 
primary  principle  of  his  method  of  reform, 
whether  dealing  with  appetite  or  crime.  We 
have  seen  how  fully  he  recognizes  the  power 
of  environment  and  circumstance.  Envi 
ronment  itself  is  the  creation  of  thought, 
and  it  is  ultimately  and  essentially  in  the 
control  of  thought.  It  is  right  and  signally 
important  that  we  should  direct  our  efforts 
to  the  amelioration  of  circumstance,  that  so 
those  results  which  conform  to  the  results 
of  virtue  may  be  facilitated  and  made  more 
constant.  Indeed,  this  fact,  that  the  melior 
ation  of  circumstance  is  also  in  man's  power 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      69 

and  is  his  prescribed  task,  bears  the  same 
witness  to  his  freedom  as  his  triumph  over 
circumstance.  It  is  analogous  to  the  crea 
tion  of  motive,  if,  indeed,  it  be  not  a  part  of 
that  process.  It  is  the  triumph  over  circum 
stance, —  only  in  broader  circle,  and  vica 
rious  in  somewhat.  But  this  triumph  over 
circumstance  in  every  circle  is  the  command 
of  virtue,  and  the  teaching  of  its  necessity 
and  possibility  is  the  cardinal  ethical  truth 
of  the  ideal  theory.  Above  and  below  and 
within  those  seven  ancestors  wrapped  up  in 
thy  skin  —  however  we  quibble  and  hedge, 
this  is  the  fatal,  inescapable  rescript  alike  of 
common  sense  and  high  philosophy  —  is 
that  new  thing  which  thou  art;  and  this, 
and  not  chiefly  those,  is  responsible  for  thy 
depravity  and  fall.  Thou  art  the  doer  of 
this  wrong,  and  not  thy  father  rather ;  and 
deviltry  is  not  all  one  with  dyspepsia.  It 
were  not  possible  for  Emerson  to  write  Car- 
lyle's  essay  on  the  Model  Prison;  but  in 
his  vocabulary  also  sinner  and  scoundrel  and 
scamp  were  not  yet  obsolete  words  nor  syno 
nyms  of  invalid. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution,  the  perception 


yo       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  the  law  of  evolution  working  on  and  up 
ward  through  all  nature  and  through  human 
society,  is  one  of  the  most  fertilizing  and  in 
spiring  facts  in  the  whole  history  of  science. 
A  doctrine  apprehended  and  vaguely  pro 
pounded  at  various  times  in  the  long  history 
of  thought,  it  is  peculiarly  and  definitely  a 
doctrine  of  our  own  time,  and  its  distinctive 
scientific  doctrine.  It  was  its  misfortune 
that  it  came  into  prominence  at  a  time  when 
in  England  and  Germany  there  prevailed  a 
poor,  mechanical  philosophy,  and  that  with 
this  it  became  identified.  I  have  spoken 
elsewhere  of  the  mischief  wrought  by  this 
unhappy  alliance  to  the  cause  of  ethics  and 
religion.  The  opposition  of  the  churches 
and  religious  men  to  the  new  truth,  by 
which  in  the  fierce  conflict  they  were  routed 
again  and  again,  and  could  not  fail  to  be 
conscious  of  the  defeats,  had  its  deep  war 
rant;  for  the  new  truth  was  half-truth,  and 
the  half  which  was  lacking  was  the  half 
which  they  held  with  their  falsehood,  and 
the  most  necessary  half.  In  America  it  was 
not  until  the  publication  of  Mr.  Fiske's 
little  treatise  upon  "  The  Destiny  of  Man  " 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      71 

—  first  read,  it  is  interesting  to  remember, 
at  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  which 
was  so  dear  to  Emerson,  and  of  which  he 
may  be  said  to  have  been  the  inspirer  — 
that  the  doctrine  was  stated  in  a  form  which 
satisfied  the  imperative  religious  and  poet 
ical  demands  of  men,  and  was  subsumed 
under  a  worthy  and  measurably  satisfying 
philosophy.  Religion  and  poetry  to-day 
have  no  quarrel  with  the  doctrine  of  evolu 
tion.  In  history,  economics  and  politics  the 
reconciliation  is  more  dilatory ;  and  it  is 
questionable  whether  it  is  not  in  these  fields 
that  the  mischief  has  been  greatest.  The 
prostitution  of  political  ideals  which  America 
and  England  witnessed  as  the  century  closed 
would  never  have  been  possible  but  for  the 
subtle  and  pervasive  poisoning  of  the  popu 
lar  consciousness  by  partial  and  false  doc 
trines  of  the  principle  and  character  of  evo 
lution.  Catch-words  about  "survival  of 
the  fittest,"  and  notions  that  the  fittest  are 
the  strongest  and  that  science  had  put  its 
imprimatur  upon  the  history  of  evolution  as 
a  history  of  remorseless  competition  and 
chartered  dominion  by  the  "  select," —  these 


72        The  Influence'  of  Emerson 

have  done,  and  will  contine  to  do,  their  fatal 
work.  But  this  is  not  the  true  philosophy 
of  evolution.  That  philosophy  compre 
hends  altruism  also,  and  gives  its  scientific 
exhibition  the  larger  place,  even  as  it  holds 
the  larger  and  ever-increasing  place  in  life. 
Severe,  indeed,  has  the  long  conflict  been, 
if  ever  less  savage ;  and  the  trail  of  blood  is 
over  the  forest  and  over  the  nations.  Who 
has  phrased  this  side  of  it  more  strongly 
than  Emerson  in  his  lines  in  "  The  World- 
Soul  "  ?  But  through  all  creation  and  from 
remotest  beginnings,  the  sacrifice  of  strong 
to  weak,  the  mother's  love,  the  mutual  aid, 
the  social  impulse  have  been  along  with  the 
struggle  and  the  selfishness,  have  ever  kept 
the  superior  influence,  thus  alone  making 
life  and  evolution  possible,  and  containing 
the  sure  potency  and  promise  of  fruition  in 
the  State  whose  ethics  shall  be  those  of 
hearth  and  home,  and  in  the  family  of 
nations,  the  federation  of  the  world. 

It  is  the  idealists,  and  they  alone,  who 
have  been  able  so  to  interpret  evolution  in 
its  bearings  upon  politics  and  human  history. 
A  hundred  years  before  John  Fiske,  at  the 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     73 

Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  gave  to  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  a  statement  satisfying 
to  religion,  Immanuel  Kant,  in  his  great 
essay  on  "  The  Natural  Principle  of  Political 
Order,"  surveyed  the  movement  of  nature 
and  of  human  history,  seeing  the  whole  as 
a  ceaseless  process  of  beneficent  evolution, 
and  seeking  to  determine  its  final  end.  Said 
Kant:  "All  the  capacities  implanted  in  a 
creature  by  nature  are  destined  to  unfold 
themselves,  completely  and  conformably  to 
their  end,  in  the  course  of  time.  ...  In  man, 
as  the  only  rational  creature  on  earth,  those 
natural  capacities  which  are  directed  toward 
the  use  of  his  reason  could  be  completely 
developed  only  in  the  species,  and  not  in  the 
individual.  .  .  .  The  means  which  nature 
employs  to  bring  about  the  development  of 
all  the  capacities  implanted  in  men  is  their 
mutual  antagonism  in  society ;  but  only  so 
far  as  this  antagonism  becomes  at  length  the 
cause  of  an  order  among  them  that  is  regu 
lated  by  law.  .  .  .  The  history  of  the  human 
race,  viewed  as  a  whole,  may  be  regarded  as 
the  realization  of  a  hidden  plan  of  nature  to 
bring  about  a  perfect  political  constitution, 


74       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

as  the  only  state  in  which  all  the  capacities 
implanted  by  her  in  mankind  can  be  fully 
developed."  "  The  idea  of  human  history," 
he  adds,  "  viewed  as  founded  upon  the  as 
sumption  of  a  universal  plan  in  nature,  gives 
us  a  new  ground  of  hope,  opening  up  to  us 
a  consoling  view  of  the  future,  in  which  the 
human  race  appears  in  the  far  distance  as 
having  worked  itself  up  to  a  condition  in 
which  all  the  germs  implanted  in  it  by  nature 
will  be  fully  developed  and  its  destiny  here 
on  earth  fulfilled.  Such  a  justification  of 
nature  —  or  rather,  let  us  say,  of  Providence 
—  is  no  insignificant  motive  for  choosing  a 
particular  point  of  view  in  contemplating  the 
course  of  the  world.  For  what  avails  it  to 
magnify  the  glory  and  wisdom  of  the  crea 
tion  in  the  irrational  domain  of  nature,  and 
to  recommend  it  to  devout  contemplation,  if 
that  part  of  the  great  display  of  the  supreme 
wisdom  which  presents  the  end  of  it  all  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race  is  to  be  viewed 
as  only  furnishing  perpetual  objections  to 
that  glory  and  wisdom  ? " 

Our  New  World  Transcendentalist  would 
put  the  same  question ;  as  he,  too,  saw  and 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      75 

said  that  the  fact  that  a  theory  meets  the 
mind's  high  demands,  serves  the  positive 
ends,  and  makes  things  fall  into  order  in 
stead  of  into  discord  is  a  persuasive  attesta 
tion  of  its  virtue  and  its  truth.  He  de 
scribed  in  a  moment  and  at  the  beginning  the 
whole  course  from  "  The  Origin  of  Species  " 
to  "  The  Destiny  of  Man "  and  beyond. 
A  dozen  years  after  Darwin  startled  the 
theologians  he  would  have  used  the  same 
serene  words  which  he  used  a  dozen  years 
before  it  or  would  have  used  a  dozen  years 
before  that :  "  We  have  a  better  opinion  of 
the  economy  of  nature  than  to  fear  that 
those  varying  phases  which  humanity  pre 
sents  ever  leave  out  any  of  the  grand  springs 
of  human  action.  Mankind  for  the  moment 
seem  to  be  in  search  of  a  religion.  The 
Jewish  cultus  is  declining :  the  Divine  or,  as 
some  will  say,  the  truly  Human  hovers, 
now  seen,  now  unseen,  before  us."  The 
period  was  cc  propitious  to  those  who  believe 
that  man  need  not  fear  the  want  of  re 
ligion,  because  they  know  his  religious  con 
stitution, —  that  he  must  rest  on  the  moral 
and  ^ligious  sentiments,  as  the  motion  of 


76       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

bodies  rests  on  geometry.  In  the  rapid  de 
cay  of  what  was  called  religion,  timid  and 
unthinking  people  fancy  a  decay  of  the  hope 
of  man.  But  the  moral  and  religious  senti 
ments  meet  us  everywhere,  alike  in  markets 
as  in  churches.  .  .  .  The  conscience  of  man 
is  regenerated  as  is  the  atmosphere,  so  that 
society  cannot  be  debauched.  The  health 
which  we  call  Virtue  is  an  equipoise  which 
easily  redresses  itself,  and  resembles  those 
rocking-stones  which  a  child's  finger  can 
move,  and  a  weight  of  many  hundred  tons 
cannot  overthrow."  It  is  to  religion  pecu 
liarly  that  he  applies  the  law  of  evolution, 
and  with  results  which  do  not  bring  dismay, 
but  joy  and  re-enforcement.  'c  The  Author 
of  Nature  has  not  left  himself  without  a 
witness  in  any  sane  mind/'  was  the  first 
article  of  that  great  creed  which  he  recited 
from  the  platform  of  the  Free  Religious  As 
sociation  in  1869  ;  and  two  years  before  that, 
he  said  in  the  same  place,  contrasting  that 
strong  consciousness  with  the  "mortifying 
puerilities "  which  abound  in  religious  his 
tory  and  with  which  men  have  propped 
their  feeble  faith,  "As  soon  as  every  man 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      77 

is  apprised  of  the  Divine  presence  within  his 
own  mind, —  is  apprised  that  the  perfect  law 
of  duty  corresponds  with  the  laws  of  chemis 
try,  of  vegetation,  of  astronomy,  as  face  to 
face  in  a  glass ;  that  the  basis  of  duty,  the 
order  of  society,  the  power  of  character,  the 
wealth  of  culture,  the  perfection  of  taste,  all 
draw  their  essence  from  this  moral  senti 
ment,  then  we  have  a  religion  that  exalts, 
that  commands  all  the  social  and  all  the  pri 
vate  action."  "  There  is  a  fear,"  he  said  else 
where,  "  that  pure  truth,  pure  morals,  will 
not  make  a  religion  for  the  affections."  This 
fear  was  foolish,  because,  as  he  saw  well, 
biography  and  history  and  poetry  ever  wait 
on  inspiration  and  in  good  time  bring  the 
ivy.  "  Whenever  the  sublimities  of  char 
acter  shall  be  incarnated  in  a  man,  we  may 
rely  that  law  and  love  and  insatiable  curios 
ity  will  follow  his  steps."  .  The  history  of  all 
in  the  past  which  makes  just  appeal  to  rev 
erence  and  devotion  is  secure,  a  permanent 
possession ;  and  new  canonizations  can  only 
make  us  richer,  and  not  poorer.  No  true 
divinity  or  saint  can  ever  become  less ;  but 
no  universal  truth  of  God  can  ever  be  long 


7  8        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

dependent,  and  it  can  never  be  contingent, 
upon  any  individual  bearer  or  embodiment 
of  it.  "  There  was  a  time  when  Christianity 
existed  in  one  child  ;  but,  if  the  child  had 
been  killed  by  Herod,  would  the  element 
have  been  lost?  God  sends  his  message,  if 
not  by  one,  then  quite  as  well  by  another. 
When  the  Master  of  the  Universe  has  ends 
to  fulfil,  he  impresses  his  will  on  the  struct 
ure  of  minds."  There  are  those  who  think 
that  but  for  Jesus  the  cardinal  truths  and 
influences  of  what  we  call,  and  properly  call, 
Christianity  would  not  be  present  among 
men.  The  rejection  of  this  view,  as  con 
cerns  not  only  Christianity,  but  every  great 
movement  in  history,  in  no  way  derogates 
from  the  praise  or  merit  of  the  thinker  or 
the  doer  who  stands  at  the  forefront  of  the 
movement,  or  from  the  charm  and  inspira 
tion  of  the  heroic  and  prophetic  life.  It 
simply  affirms  that  universal  truths  of  God 
and  the  supply  of  humanity's  cardinal  de 
mands  are  superior  to  contingency.  We 
find  that  the  development  of  monotheism 
among  the  Greeks  follows  much  the  same 
course  as  its  development  among  the  He- 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      79 

brews,  the  independent  parallel  lines  having 
their  origin  and  impulse  in  the  common 
mind  of  man.  We  may  not  believe  that, 
had  there  been  no  first  Columbus,  there 
would  have  been  no  second ;  that,  had  there 
been  no  Kant,  Fichte  and  Hegel  would  not 
somehow  have  spoken ;  without  Adams  and 
Jefferson,  no  articulation  of  the  demand  for 
independence ;  without  Garrison  and  Lin 
coln,  no  emancipation.  None  the  less  do 
we  keep  the  saints'  days,  and  celebrate  the 
actual  pioneers  and  heroes.  Many  currents 
converge  in  the  great  man  and  movement, 
and  diverge  from  them.  The  currents  are 
numerous  and  calculable  almost  in  ratio  of 
the  greatness ;  and  the  great  soul  most  rev 
erently  recognizes  its  mediatorship  and  in 
spiration,  its  obligations  to  the  past  and 
their  commandment  for  fulfilment.  Emer 
son  himself  speaks  of  the  seven  or  eight 
ancestors  rolled  up  in  each  other's  skin, 
whom  a  man  feels  and  represents,  and  who 
contribute  their  variety  of  notes  to  that  new 
piece  of  music  which  his  life  is ;  and  as  of 
his  personal  inheritance,  so  he  would  have 
spoken  of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual, 


8o       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

while  recognizing  in  wonder  and  awe  that 
original  and  extra  element,  in  no  way  to  be 
accounted  for  but  by  "  the  royal  reason.'' 
Marcus  Aurelius,  the  Roman  Emerson, 
with  all  reverence  for  the  direct  inspiration 
of  the  gods,  knows  well  and  piously  wit 
nesses  how  much  in  him  is  his  grandfather 
and  his  father,  and  how  the  compounding 
with  his  own  nature  of  the  influence  of 
Apollonius  and  Rusticus  and  Maximus  was 
what  had  given  him  moral  dignity,  freedom 
from  superstition,  love  of  philosophy,  and 
steadiness  of  purpose.  And  so  Jesus,  most 
synthetic,  inspiring  and  divine  among  the 
sons  of  men,  would  warn  us,  when  intellect 
ual  praise  is  intemperate  and  distorted,  to 
bethink  us  of  Hosea  and  Isaiah,  of  Plato 
and  Zeno  and  Philo,  to  remember  that  the 
mind  of  his  time  was  surcharged  with  the 
elements  precipitated  in  him  with  such  revo 
lutionary  power  and  charm,  and  not  to  doubt 
that  even  without  him  God  would  somehow 
have  found  his  Pauls  and  Johns,  his  Augus- 
tines  and  Bernards,  his  Calvins  and  Chan- 
nings,  to  bear  the  message  of  divine  love 
and  incarnation  to  the  human  race 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson     81 

With  the  churches  of  his  time,  Emerson 
came  into  opposition ;  but  the  ground  of 
his  opposition  concerned  what  was  accidental 
and  extrinsic.  "  I  object  to  the  claim  of 
miraculous  dispensation, —  certainly  not  to 
the  doctrine  of  Christianity."  The  miracu 
lous  claim,  to  his  mind,  "  impaired  the  sound 
ness  of  him  who  makes  it ;  ...  it  is  contrary 
to  that  law  of  nature  which  all  wise  men 
recognize,  never  to  require  a  larger  cause 
than  is  necessary  to  the  effect."  It  con 
founded  Christianity  with  "  the  fables  of 
every  popular  religion."  We  know  divine 
things  only  by  the  like  spirit  in  ourselves, 
and  are  repelled  by  any  effort  to  enforce 
acceptance  of  them  by  wonders  or  anything 
extraneous  or  official  instead  of  by  pure 
sympathy.  The  attempt  to  elevate  Christ 
out  of  humanity  "  takes  his  teachings  out 
of  logic  and  out  of  nature,"  and  distrust  of 
the  story  prompts  distrust  of  the  doctrine. 

Emerson's  opposition  to  the  miraculous 
theory  was  precisely  that  of  Kant,  who  in 
his  "  Religion  of  Reason  "  exhibited  so  con 
vincingly  that  it  is  favorable  neither  to  ethics 
nor  to  faith.  Churches  have  based  belief  in 


82        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  immortality  of  the  soul  upon  Christ's 
resurrection,  pronouncing  the  faith  vain 
without  this.  But  the  physical  resurrection 
of  a  supernatural  Christ  no  more  gives  as 
surance  of  the  resurrection  of  the  common 
man  than  the  fact  that  Christ  raises  Lazarus 
from  the  dead  proves  that  Matthew  and 
Mark  could  do  it,  or  you  and  I.  So  the 
perfect  life  of  a  being  whose  nature  tran 
scends  ours  has  not  the  incitement  nor  im 
perative  for  us  of  the  less  perfect  life  of  one 
who,  howsoever  transcending  us  in  spiritual 
insight  and  moral  worth,  is  still  of  the  same 
nature,  having  the  same  essential  roots  in 
the  Divine.  The  historical  justification  of 
the  miraculous  theory  is  indeed  evident  and 
strong.  By  such  particularization  the  gen 
eral  mind  is  leavened  and  lifted  to  the  per 
ception  of  the  wonder  of  the  world  and  the 
spirituality  of  man.  Until  this  perception 
becomes  reliable  and  influential  in  its  uni 
versal  application,  the  particular  object-les 
son  will  continue  to  be  distorted.  The  over 
emphasis  is  nature's  way  out  of  no  em 
phasis.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  men  should 
cease  speaking  of  sacred  and  profane  his- 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      83 

tory ;  but  it  is  also  easy  and  common  for 
men  to  cease  the  distinction  by  making  all 
history  profane.  Until  we  learn  to  see  that 
all  is  sacred,  that  the  sacred  is  perennial,  and 
that  John  Calvin  and  John  Milton  and  the 
"  Mayflower"  men  are  also  Bible  men,  so  long 
the  "  Jewish  cultus  "  or  another  must  go  on, 
and  Josias,  Obadias,  and  the  siege  of  Ai 
weary  the  educated  man  by  their  exaggerated 
prominence.  The  miracle  will  not  "  fade 
out  of  history  "  till  "faith  and  wonder  and 
the  primal  earth  "  are  not  alone  "  born  into 
the  world  with  every  child,"  but  are  of  all  men 
known  to  be.  The  slow  ages,  keeping  their 
many  steeds  abreast,  attend  efficiently  to  the 
conservations.  We  do  not  need,  any  of  us, 
to  connive  at  the  illusions  and  delays,  al 
though  some  of  the  anxious  faithless  seem  to 
think  it.  If  the  Daughters  of  Time  can  be  at 
once  "  hypocritic  "  and  innocent,  none  of  us 
can  be  :  we  cannot  be  naive  by  calculation. 
The  highest  skill  for  each  of  us  is  simple 
truth,  and  we  may  safely  leave  it  to  the 
divinities  to  weave  our  thread  rightly  into 
the  great  pattern.  This  was  the  confidence 
of  Emerson.  The  highest  churchman  and 


84       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  stoutest  champion  of  infallibility  are  not 
equally  serene,  equally  neighborly  with  the 
past  and  its  oracles,  or  equally  reposeful  in 
the  future.  Nowhere  are  the  religious  post 
ulates  so  firm,  yet  nowhere  is  such  concord 
with  the  scientific  process.  He  has  no  need 
to  interpose  checks  or  diversions.  New 
Orthodoxies  rise  with  their  "  Christo-cen- 
tric  "  theories,  thinking  to  eat  their  cake  and 
keep  it  too,  putting  slights  on  miracle  at 
the  same  time  that  they  put  it  to  use. 
They  have  never  learned  to  define  Man,  nor 
seen  what  the  definition  involves.  They 
think  of  men  ;  and,  even  as  concerns  sin  it 
self,  they  have  not  taken  in  the  full  phi 
losophy  of  the  parable  of  the  prodigal  son. 
Emerson  sees  clearly  the  fatuity  of  all  this 
thinking.  It  will  go  on  until  men  know 
their  real  nature  as  it  is,  and  as  Christ  knew 
it ;  so  long  especially  as  the  apprehension 
and  virtue  of  the  soul's  divinity  are  menaced 
and  shadowed  by  "the  puppyism  "  —  it  was 
the  most  scornful  word  to  which  Emerson 
was  ever  moved  —  "  of  a  pretension  of  look 
ing  down  on  the  head  of  all  human  culture, 
setting  up  against  Jesus  Christ  every  little 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      85 

self  magnified."  "  It  behooves  the  lover 
of  God  to  love  that  lover  of  God/'  he 
said  with  his  great  emphasis  when  he  sus 
pected  popular  reaction  from  exaggeration 
to  profaneness ;  and  as  against  any  vulgar 
definitions  he  would  have  been  patient  with 
the  age  of  superstition  till  the  age  of  ra 
tional  reverence  came.  The  religious  mind 
demands  the  objective ;  and  mankind  does 
well  to  glorify  attainment  while  on  its  way 
to  the  sanctity  of  a  true  understanding  of 
its  own  essence  and  potentiality.  But  Em 
erson  well  knew  that  the  emphatic  and 
peculiar  features  of  the  Church's  ancient 
system,  its  bibliology,  cosmology,  penol 
ogy,  eschatology  and  fellow  ologies,  its 
Christology  with  the  rest,  were  doomed, 
the  moment  it  was  seen  that  Eden,  in  the 
words  of  his  disciple  in  her  beautiful  hymn, 

"  Is  not  ancient  story  told, 
But  a  glowing  prophecy." 

Primeval  history  is  the  record  of  the  rise  of 
man,  not  of  his  fall.  The  chasm  of  which 
humanity  has  been  so  painfully  sensible 
and  sought  so  strenuously  to  give  account 


86       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

is  between  the  creative  archetypal  Idea  and 
the  first  step  of  the  evolutionary  process 
whose  last  step  shall  be  the  actualization 
of  the  Idea  in  the  Divine  Commonwealth. 
The  first  Eden  is  of  heaven,  heavenly,  the 
harrying  divine  thought  implanted  in  the 
mind  of  man  at  the  beginning,  the  haunting 
hint  of  his  own  definition ;  the  last  Eden  is 
the  Republic  of  God.  Emerson  saw  the 
path,  the  motive,  the  original  and  end ;  and 
he  saw  them  in  a  way  which  made  his 
philosophy  of  religion  harmonious  with  the 
science  of  his  time,  and  made  him  the  true 
friend  and  aider  of  all  critical  men  who,  in 
a  critical  age,  would  live  in  the  spirit. 

All  evolution  was  subsumed  by  him  under 
an  adequate  philosophy.  Behind  and  through 
the  process  he  saw  the  Idea, —  which  so 
many  men  of  science  in  this  time  have  not 
seen,  and,  not  seeing,  have  wrought  their 
mischief.  Already  as  a  boy,  in  one  of  his 
college  essays,*  he  wrote  what  might  well 

*  His  Bowdoin  essay  on  "  The  Present  State  of  Ethical  Philoso 
phy,"  in  i8ai,  for  which  he  received  a  second  prize.  He  received 
the  first  Bowdoin  prize  the  previous  year  for  an  essay  on  "The  Char- 
aracter  of  Socrates  "  ;  but  this  essay  is  inferior  to  the  other.  The  two 
have  been  published  together  with  an  introduction  by  Rev.  Edward 
Everett  Hale. 


The  Philosophy  of  Emerson      87 

have  served  Kropotkin  as  a  motto  for  the 
title-page  of  his  "  Mutual  Aid  as  a  Factor  in 
Evolution  "  :  "  The  opinion  that  nature  tends 
to  savageness  is  not  true."  The  impulses  to 
social  intercourse  he  saw  were  aboriginal ; 
and  more  selective  and  determining  than 
fierceness  was  parental  affection,  dictating  ac 
tions  of  "wise  and  profound  calculation." 
The  word  of  his  youth  was  the  word  of  his 
age.  The  law  after  which  the  Universe  was 
made  he  pronounced  to  be  that  which  the 
moral  sentiment  speaks  to  every  man ;  and 
it  was  with  the  assertion  of  "  parity,  identity 
of  design,  through  Nature,"  that  he  declared 
that  we  find  "  benefit  to  be  the  uniform  aim  : 
that  there  is  a  force  always  at  work  to  make 
the  best  better  and  the  worst  good."  This 
is  Emerson's  rationale  of  the  dynamics  and 
the  teleology  of  evolution ;  and  there  is  no 
other  satisfying  or  sane  philosophy. 

Amidst  many  rash  and  mischievous  "  phi 
losophies  of  evolution,"  it  is  wholesome  to 
recur  to  these  first  principles, —  profitable 
and  very  necessary  to  consider  seriously  what 
is  first  and  what  circumferential  second.  No 
man  in  this  time  has  approached  the  prob- 


88       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

lem  of  the  world  and  the  soul  with  mind  so 
capacious  and  so  veracious  as  our  own  great 
thinker;  none  has  spoken  a  word  so  pro 
portionate,  so  rational,  and  so  commanding. 
The  American,  at  least,  has  not  excuse  who, 
possessed  of  Emerson's  inspired  and  sacred 
page,  permits  his  insight  to  truckle  to  tra 
dition,  hangs  up  his  logic  on  psychology, 
and  chokes  intellect  and  freedom  in  mechan 
ism,  lawlessness,  and  fate. 


II 

Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker 


EMERSON    AND    THEODORE 
PARKER 

IN  1838  the  daguerreotype  was  invented. 
I  wish  that  the  first  sensitive  plate,  perfected 
and  tenacious,  could  have  been  uncovered, 
not  in  Westminster  Abbey,  where  on  a 
midsummer  day  in  that  year  1838  Victoria 
was  crowned  queen, —  the  gewgaws  conse 
crated  by  traditions  of  the  Conqueror  and 
Richard  Lionheart  and  Harry  Tudor  and 
the  real  kings  brushed  up  once  more  by  the 
rather  ghostly  bishops  who  wore  the  robes 
of  Stephen  Langton  and  Joseph  Butler,  and 
a  galvanized  crown  blessed  once  more  by  a 
galvanized  Church, —  not  there,  but  in  the 
little  chapel  of  the  Divinity  School  of  Har 
vard  University,  where  on  another  mid 
summer  day  of  that  same  year  a  little  crowd 
of  men  and  women  was  gathered,  and  an 
earnest  man  was  speaking  simply  some 
simple,  earnest  words.  We  should  all  like 
a  picture  of  that  scene,  I  think;  for  this  man 


92        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

was  the  real  king,  and  this  scene  was  more 
impressive  than  the  other  to  him  who  sees 
f  deep.  Ideas  alone  have  royalty  and  divine 
right  in  this  noon-time  of  the  world ;  and 
so  we  count  this  little  gathering  at  Harvard 
the  most  important  thing  of  that  year  1838. 

The  speaker  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
The  name  did  not  mean  much  on  the  morn 
ing  of  that  day.  The  small  world  to  which 
it  was  known  at  all  knew  it  as  the  name  of 
a  young  man  who  had  left  the  pulpit  of  the 
Unitarian  Church  half  a  dozen  years  before, 
because  he  could  not  conscientiously  join  in 
the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper;  who 
had  been  to  Europe  since  and  hunted  up 
Thomas  Carlyle  in  the  solitude  of  Craigen- 
puttock,  and  had  just  now  published  in 
Boston  Carlyle's  "Sartor  Resartus."  He 
had  written  a  little  book  of  his  own,  too, — 
"  Nature," — and  had  given  lectures  in  Boston 
and  the  towns  about,  which  had  drawn  to 
him  the  attention  of  the  thoughtful  people. 
He  had  given  an  oration  at  Harvard  the 
year  before  the  Divinity  School  Address,  on 
"  The  American  Scholar,"  which  had  so 
shocked  the  scholars  who  heard  and  read  it 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     93 

into  reality  and  consciousness  of  their  own 
souls  that  Dr.  Holmes  pronounced  it  "  our 
intellectual  Declaration  of  Independence." 
He  had  retired  now  from  the  rush  and  roar 
of  Boston  to  the  quiet  of  a  Concord  farm 
house  to  spend  his  life. 

"  Good-bye,  proud  world  !   I'm  going  home," 

he  had  said  again  to  the  fawning  flattery  and 
upstart  wealth  of  the  town  and  the  insinceri 
ties  and  old  clothes  of  the  Church. 

"  When  I  am  stretched  beneath  the  pines, 
Where  the  evening  star  so  holy  shines, 
I  laugh  at  the  lore  and  the  pride  of  man, 
At  the  sophist  schools  and  the  learned  clan ; 
For  what  are  they  all,  in  their  high  conceit, 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet  ?  " 

He  had  been  meeting  with  God  in  the 
bush,  standing  on  the  holy  ground  with  the 
shoes  off  his  feet;  and  he  was  come  now 
to  tell  the  college  and  the  Church  what  the 
voice  had  said. 

He  spoke  of  the  beauty  of  nature.  He 
spoke  of  spiritual  laws,  of  which  all  nature 
that  we  see  is  but  the  clothing  and  the 


94       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

symbol.  He  spoke  of  the  more  overpower 
ing  beauty  of  the  sentiment  of  virtue,  which 
teaches  us  that  we  are  "born  to  the  per 
fect."  "  The  laws  of  the  soul  execute  them 
selves,"  he  said.  "  He  who  does  a  good 
deed  is  instantly  ennobled ;  he  who  does  a 
mean  deed  is  by  the  action  itself  contracted. 
If  a  man  is  at  heart  just,  then  in  so  far 
is  he  God.  If  a  man  deceive,  he  deceives 
himself.  Thus  is  man  made  the  Provi 
dence  to  himself,  dispensing  good  to  his 
goodness  and  evil  to  his  sin."  This  senti 
ment,  he  said,  lies  at  the  foundation  of 
society.  Its  absence  is  the  presence  of 
degradation.  Let  this  primary  faith  depart, 
and  the  very  words  it  spake  become  false 
and  hurtful.  The  doctrine  of  inspiration 
lost  or  the  oracle  made  second-hand,  and 
the  church  falls,  and  the  state,  art,  letters, 
and  life. 

Such  a  time,  said  this  new  prophet,  had 
come  in  the  history  of  the  American 
Church.  Its  prayers  and  dogmas  were 
grown  as  fabulous  as  Dante's  Inferno, 
wholly  insulated  from  anything  in  the  life 
and  business  of  the  people.  Tradition,  said 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     95 

he,  characterizes  the  preaching  of  this 
country  :  it  comes  out  of  the  memory,  and 
not  out  of  the  soul.  It  is  assumed  that  the 
age  of  inspiration  is  past,  and  that  the  Bible 
is  closed.  But  it  is  the  office  of  a  true 
teacher  to  show  us  that  God  is,  not  was ; 
that  he  speaketh,  not  spake.  The  true 
Christianity,  a  faith  like  Christ's  in  the  infini 
tude  of  man,  was  lost.  Jesus  Christ,  said 
Emerson,  was  true  to  what  is  in  you  and 
me.  He  saw  that  God  incarnates  himself 
in  man,  and  evermore  goes  forth  anew  to 
take  possession  of  his  world.  He  said : 
"  I  am  divine.  Through  me,  God  acts ; 
through  me,  speaks.  Would  you  see  God, 
see  me ;  or,  see  thee,  when  thou  also  thinkest 
as  I  now  think."  But  the  understanding 
caught  this  high  chant  from  the  poet's  lips, 
and  said  in  the  next  age,  "  This  was 
Jehovah  come  down  out  of  heaven."  The 
idioms  of  his  language  usurped  the  place 
of  his  truth ;  and  churches  are  built,  not 
on  his  principles,  but  on  his  tropes.  The 
preachers  do  not  see  that  they  make 
Christ's  gospel  not  glad,  and  degrade  his 
life  and  dialogues  by  insulation  and  pecu- 


96        The  Influence  of  Emerson 

liarity.  Let  them  lie,  as  they  befell,  alive 
and  warm  and  part  of  human  life.  To  aim 
to  convert  a  man  by  miracles  is  a  profa 
nation  of  the  soul.  That  which  shows  God 
in  me  is  what  fortifies  me.  Dare  to  go 
alone.  Dare  to  love  God  without  mediator 
or  veil.  Thank  God  for  all  good  men, 
but  say,  "  I  also  am  a  man."  Yourself  a 
new-born  bard  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  cast 
conformity  behind  you,  and  acquaint  men 
at  first  hand  with  God. 

This  Harvard  address  of  Emerson's 
marked  an  epoch.  It  was  the  first  clear, 
complete,  and  uncompromising  utterance  of 
rational  religion  in  America.  It  showed  all 
men  at  once  what  the  new  faith  was,  and 
what  it  meant  to  do.  It  fell  into  the  camp 
of  the  stiff  and  proper  Unitarianism  of  Bos 
ton  and  Cambridge  like  a  thunderbolt.  It 
was  a  touchstone.  It  compelled  every  man 
to  define  himself  and  speak  out  somehow  or 
other ;  and  it  divided  the  Church.  "  There 
are  now  two  parties  among  the  Unitarians," 
wrote  Parker.  "  One  is  for  progress ;  the 
other  says,  c  Our  strength  is  to  stand  still/ 
Dr.  Channing  is  the  real  head  of  the  first 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     97 

party ;  the  other  has  no  head."  Charming, 
who  was  less  than  almost  anything  else  in 
the  world  a  cc  Channing  Unitarian,"  stood 
by  Emerson, —  said,  indeed,  that  he  could 
discover  no  essential  difference  between 
Emerson's  address  and  the  sermon  he  him 
self  had  preached  at  the  dedication  of  the 
school.  He  found  that  he  himself "  could 
not  draw  a  long  breath  in  Boston."  Soon 
after,  indeed,  he  died.  Had  he  lived  ten 
years  longer,  with  his  great  prestige  and 
power  and  his  ever  steady  movement  for 
ward,  he  would  have  saved  the  Unitarian 
Church  in  America  half  a  century. 

But  in  the  general  Unitarian  camp,  "  one 
shouted,"  said  Parker,  " '  The  Philistines  be 
upon  us  ! '  another,  f  We  are  all  dead  men  ! ' 
while  the  majority  called  out,  <  Atheism  ! '  " 
The  dean  of  the  Divinity  School  said, 
"That  part  of  it  which  was  not  folly  was 
downright  atheism."  Mr.  Norton,  the 
high  priest  of  the  Church  in  those  days, 
opened  his  mouth  and  preached  upon  "  The 
Latest  Form  of  Infidelity."  No  miracles, 
he  said,  no  religion :  the  miracles  of  Jesus 
are  the  only  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Chris- 


98       The  Influence  of  Emerson 

tianity.  Henry  Ware  told  the  young  men 
that,  if  there  appeared  to  them  any  contra 
diction  between  the  reason  of  man  and  the 
letter  of  the  Bible,  they  "must  follow  the 
written  word."  "  Reason,"  said  another, 
"must  be  put  down,  or  she  will  soon  ask 
terrible  questions."  Harvard  College,  in 
the  person  of  one  who  taught  a  "  sound " 
philosophy  there,  had  already  pronounced 
Emerson's  thoughts  "  fantastic  and  unreal  "  ; 
and  Professor  Felton  soon  found  that  they 
were  "  full  of  extravagance  and  overween 
ing  self-confidence,  ancient  errors  disguised 
in  misty  rhetoric,  and  theories  which  would 
overturn  society  and  resolve  the  world  into 
chaos."  Such  being  the  voice  of  Harvard 
College  and  of  the  Unitarian  Church,  we 
can  picture  for  ourselves  the  reception  ac 
corded  the  new  prophet  in  other  religious 
circles  and  by  the  world  at  large. 

But  amid  all  this  uproar  there  was  one 
young  man,  not  thirty  years  old  yet,  who 
had  sat  quietly  through  the  address  in  the 
Harvard  Chapel  and,  going  home,  had 
written :  "  It  was  the  most  inspiring  strain 
I  ever  listened  to, —  so  beautiful,  so  just, 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     99 

so  true,  and  terribly  sublime  !  My  soul  is 
roused,  and  this  week  I  shall  write  the  long- 
meditated  sermons  on  the  state  of  the 
Church  and  the  duties  of  these  times/' 
This  young  man  had  graduated  at  the 
Divinity  School  two  years  before,  studying 
under  Ware  and  Norton  there,  and  was  now 
settled  over  a  little  parish  in  West  Roxbury. 
He  was  born  in  Lexington.  His  grand 
father  was  the  captain  of  the  minute-men 
who  gathered  on  Lexington  Green  on  that 
morning  of  the  iQth  of  April,  1775,  an<^  l£d 
in  the  first  battle  with  British  tyranny  in 
the  Revolution.  The  young  man's  name 
was  Theodore  Parker. 

Theodore  Parker  was  already  a  suspected 
man,  known  among  his  fellows  as  a  man  of 
ideas ;  and  during  the  next  three  years  he 
did  much  thinking.  In  May,  1841,  at  an 
ordination  in  South  Boston,  he  sounded  his 
full  keynote,  in  a  sermon  on  "The  Tran 
sient  and  Permanent  in  Christianity."  He 
showed  the  evils  of  an  appeal  to  any  ex 
ternal,  prescriptive  authority  in  matters  of 
religion.  He  showed  that  there  is  no  reason 
why  moral  and  religious  truths  should  rest 


ioo     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

for  their  support  on  the  personal  authority 
of  their  revealer  any  more  than  the  truths 
of  science  on  the  authority  of  him  who 
makes  them  known  first  or  most  clearly. 
"  If  it  could  be  proved,"  he  said,  "that  the 
Gospels  were  a  fabrication  and  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  never  lived,  Christianity  would 
still  stand  firm  and  fear  no  evil.  In  an  age 
of  corruption,  Jesus  stood  and  looked  up  to 
God.  There  was  nothing  between  him  and 
the  Father  of  all.  And  we  never  are  Chris 
tians  as  he  was  the  Christ  until  we  worship 
as  Jesus  did,  with  no  mediator,  with  nothing 
between  us  and  the  Father  of  all." 

You  remember  the  result  of  this.  It 
seems  almost  incredible  to-day,  when  Chan- 
ning's  Baltimore  sermon  of  1819,  Emerson's 
Harvard  address  of  1838,  and  this  very 
sermon  of  Parker's  in  1841  are  the  three 
utterances  popularly  classed  in  the  Unita 
rian  circle  as  the  conspicuous  landmarks 
of  Unitarian  thought  and  progress.  The 
Church  dropped  him.  "  So  far  as  the  min 
isters  are  concerned,"  he  was  compelled  to 
say,  "  I  am  alone."  But  the  blood  of  his 
Lexington  grandfather  was  in  him,  and  he 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker 


said  :  "  I  will  go  about  and  preach  and  lecture 
in  the  city  and  glen,  by  the  roadside  and 
fieldside,  and  wherever  men  and  women 
may  be  found.  I  will  go  eastward  and  west 
ward  and  northward  and  southward,  and 
make  the  land  ring  ;  and  if  this  New 
England  theology,  that  cramps  the  intellect 
and  palsies  the  soul  of  us,  does  not  come  to 
the  ground,  then  it  shall  be  because  it  has 
more  truth  in  it  than  I  have  ever  found. 
What  I  have  seen  to  be  false  I  will  proclaim 
a  lie  on  the  house-top  ;  and,  fast  as  God  re 
veals  truth,  I  will  declare  his  word."  And 
then,  while  almost  every  pulpit  and  every 
newspaper  in  Boston  was  vilifying  him, 
while  some  of  his  clerical  friends  would  not 
speak  to  him  in  the  street  and  refused  to 
take  him  by  the  hand,  —  let  us  never  forget 
the  noble  exceptions,  let  us  remember  Free 
man  Clarke  and  Bartol  and  Robbins  and  the 
rest,  —  in  their  public  meetings  left  the  sofas 
or  benches  where  he  sat  down,  and  withdrew 
from  him,  we  read,  as  Jews  from  contact 
with  a  leper,  then  a  little  company  of  gen 
tlemen  met  together,  passed  one  resolution, 
and  went  home.  "  Resolved,  That  Theodore 


102     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Parker  shall  have  a  hearing  in  Boston."  To 
my  mind,  that  was  one  of  the  most  remark 
able  church  councils  ever  held.  The  Coun 
cil  of  Trent  did  not  accomplish  so  much  as 
that  in  its  whole  six  years. 

I  speak  to  you  of  Emerson  and  Parker 
to-day,  while  the  flowers  laid  on  the  grave 
of  Emerson  are  still  fragrant,  because  I 
would  invoke  the  influence  of  this  eloquent 
and  solemn  hour  to  impress  more  deeply 
upon  every  soul  of  us  the  duties  of  openness 
to  new  ideas,  of  scorn  of  compromise,  and 
of  self-reliance.*  I  wish  that  in  this  hour 
we  may  bethink  ourselves  more  gratefully 
what  the  darkness  was  into  which  these  great 
souls  let  in  the  light  by  which  we  walk ;  and 
I  wish  that,  turning  from  our  secularities 
and  societies  and  strifes,  we  may,  amid  these 
sacramental  memories,  more  seriously  fix  our 
minds  upon  the  infinite  God,  the  immortal 
life,  and  the  eternal  right,  in  the  conscious 
ness  of  which  they  reposed  and  made  true 
religion  to  consist,  and  to  consist  alone. 

*  This  address  was  first  given  soon  after  the  death  of  Emerson, 
and  this  original  occasional  character,  manifest  in  much  of  it,  I  have 
not  sought  to  change,  although  certain  references  in  the  paper  as  now 
printed  are  of  later  date. 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     103 

Were  this  a  biographical  study,  much 
should  be  said  of  the  personal  and  literary 
relations  of  the  two  great  thinkers ;  but  at 
these  we  may  here  give  but  the  merest  glance. 
Parker  had  met  Emerson  almost  two  years 
before  the  Harvard  address, —  perhaps  even 
before  that.  While  yet  hardly  out  of  the 
Divinity  School,  he  had  lectured  in  Concord, 
and  had  passed  part  of  the  evening  with 
Emerson,  going  home  to  record  his  admira 
tion  in  his  journal.  In  the  autumn  of  1837 
he  is  in  the  Connecticut  Valley,  delighting 
in  "  Nature,"  which  had  appeared  only  the 
year  before,  and  resenting  Professor  Bowen's 
attack  upon  it.  Taking  the  little  West  Rox- 
bury  parish,  we  find  him  quoting  Emerson 
in  his  pulpit.  As  we  find  "  Darwinism  "  in 
Emerson  before  Darwin,  so  we  find  it  in 
Parker.  Sixteen  years  before  "  The  Origin 
of  Species  "  we  find  him  saying  in  a  sermon  : 
"  In  the  visible  world  there  is  a  law  of  con 
tinuity.  All  is  done  gradually,  nothing  by 
leaps.  Invisibly  the  vegetable  and  animal 
world  approach  and  intermingle.  In  animals 
lower  down  you  see  hints  that  a  man  is  yet 
to  be."  He  contributed  articles  to  the  Dial, 


104     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

which  Emerson  and  Margaret  Fuller  edited. 
Writing  of  the  Dial  long  afterwards,  Emer 
son  said,  "  It  had  some  numbers  highly 
important,  because  they  contained  papers  by 
Theodore  Parker,  which,"  he  adds  in 
tribute  to  Parker's  popular  qualities,  a  sold 
the  numbers."  The  Dial  lived  four  years, 
dying  in  1844.  Three  years  later  Parker 
joined  himself  with  Emerson  and  J.  Eliot 
Cabot  to  edit  the  Massachusetts  Quarterly 
Review,  which  was  also  loved  by  the  gods  and 
died  young, —  younger  even  than  the  Dial; 
but  it  was  made  memorable  by  the  Editor's 
Address,  written  by  Emerson,  and  by  Parker's 
papers  upon  Channing  and  upon  Emerson 
himself.  No  so  important  general  review 
of  Emerson's  writings  had  before  appeared. 
It  may  fitly  be  compared  in  its  office  with 
Sterling's  early  review  of  Carlyle.  Its  ap 
preciation  of  Emerson's  intimacy  with  nature, 
and  his  strong  use  of  the  common  things  of 
our  plain  New  England  life,  is  clear  and 
beautiful,  and  not  less  striking  its  recogni 
tion  of  the  catholicity,  sanity,  and  humor 
with  which  Emerson  makes  philosophy  and 
poetry  out  of  struggling  thinkers  of  every 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     105 

stripe, — "  the  conservative  who  thinks  the 
nation  is  lost  if  his  ticket  chance  to  miscarry, 
the  bigot  worshipping  the  knot-hole  through 
which  a  dusty  beam  of  light  has  looked  in 
upon  his  darkness,  the  radical  who  declares 
that  nothing  is  good  if  established,  and  the 
patent  reformer  who  screams  in  your  ears 
that  he  can  finish  the  world  with  a  single 
touch."  Comparing  Emerson  with  our 
other  American  writers,  Parker  declared  that 
his  fame  and  influence  would  outlast  them 
all.  Emerson's  editorial  address  had  been 
full  of  the  spirit  which  he  himself  so  justly 
ascribes  to  Parker.  There  is  the  Parker 
spirit  in  his  word  upon  the  religious  problem 
and  condition  of  the  time ;  the  spirit  in  his 
word  upon  the  political  character  of  the  time 
which  later  inspired  alike  Parker's  words  and 
his  own  upon  both  Daniel  Webster  and  John 
Brown ;  the  Parker  discontent  with  mere 
bigness  in  America  unmatched  by  moral 
greatness.  Only  our  geography  and  material 
activities  were  colossal  :  no  commensurate 
genius  was  yet  reported,  "  no  speech  heard 
but  that  of  the  auctioneers,  newsboys,  and  the 
caucus."  "  Where/'  he  exclaimed,  "  is  the 


io6     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

great  breath  of  the  New  World,  the  voice  of 
aboriginal  nations  opening  new  eras  with 
hymns  of  lofty  cheer?"  That  breath  was 
already  finding  utterance  in  his  question  and 
demand,  in  the  words  which  he  was  speak 
ing  month  by  month  to  young  men  in  college 
halls  and  to  the  American  people  from  plat 
forms  east  and  west,  in  country  and  in 
town  ;  it  was  finding  utterance  in  the  sermons 
and  lectures  of  Parker ;  it  had  found  utter 
ance  in  the  things  of  religion,  for  a  genera 
tion,  in  the  words  and  life  of  Channing,  who 
had  died  five  years  before,  and  who  was  in  so 
true  and  large  a  sense  the  spiritual  father  of 
both  Emerson  and  Parker. 

This  peculiar  obligation  to  Channing  of 
both  Emerson  and  Parker  must  not  be 
passed  unrecognized,  even  in  the  briefest 
survey  of  their  religious  work  and  influence. 
The  three  names  must  be  grouped  together. 
They  make  our  great  triumvirate  in  the 
realm  of  religious  progress  and  reform. 
They  had  the  same  high  idealistic  philoso 
phy  ;  they  stood  for  the  same  rational 
method ;  and  they  had  alike  that  reverence 
for  the  soul  and  that  lofty  social  ideal  which 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     107 

made  them  as  earnest  and  constant  workers 
in  the  field  of  politics  and  whatever  con 
cerned  man's  freedom  and  growth  as  in  the 
field  of  religion.  Emerson  was  born  in  the 
very  year,  1803,  that  Channing  was  ordained 
and  installed  as  minister  of  the  Federal 
Street  Church  ;  and  he  grew  up  in  a  commu 
nity,  and  especially  in  a  family  circle,  per 
vaded  by  Channing's  influence.  In  1821, 
while  he  was  a  student  at  Harvard  College, 
he  heard  Channing  deliver  the  Dudleian 
Lecture  there,  and  expressed  his  admiration 
of  it  as  the  fruit  of cc  moral  imagination  "  and 
"  the  highest  species  of  reasoning  upon  di 
vine  subjects."  He  began  his  studies  for 
the  ministry  under  Channing's  direction ; 
and  soon  after  the  completion  of  his  studies 
we  find  him  preaching  in  Channing's  pulpit. 
He  pays  tribute  to  Channing's  genius  and 
influence  as  among  the  more  immediate  early 
causes  of  the  Transcendental  movement. 
The  American  Unitarian  Association,  of 
which  Channing  was  chosen  president,  was 
formed,  by  auspicious  coincidence,  on  Em 
erson's  birthday,  May  25,  1825  ;  and  Emer 
son  was  one  of  its  first  missionary  preachers. 


io8      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Of  Channing's  address  on  "  Spiritual  Free 
dom,"  given  soon  after  the  formation  of 
the  Association,  Mr.  Chadwick  justly  says, 
"  We  do  not  wonder  at  Emerson's  delight 
in  Channing  when  we  read  this  superb  an 
ticipation  of  his  own  c  Self-reliance.' '  Mr. 
Chadwick  marshals  various  passages  of  the 
kind  that  "made  Emerson  bless  Channing 
as  one  of  those  who  had  said  his  good  things 
before  him."  Channing  was  almost  as  im 
patient  as  Emerson  himself  with  the  growth 
of  what  he  called  a  "  Unitarian  orthodoxy." 
His  deafness  kept  him  from  Emerson's  early 
Boston  lectures ;  but  his  daughter  heard 
them  with  joy,  and  borrowed  the  manu 
scripts  to  read  to  her  father,  in  whom  they 
also  found  hearty  response.  When  others 
condemned  Emerson  for  his  Harvard  ad 
dress,  Channing  defended  him ;  and  he  grew 
steadily  younger,  more  hospitable,  and  more 
prophetic,  as  he  grew  older.  "In  our  wan 
tonness,"  said  Emerson,  "  we  often  flout 
Dr.  Channing,  and  say  he  is  getting  old. 
But  as  soon  as  he  is  ill,  we  remember  he  is 
our  bishop,  and  that  we  have  not  done  with 
him  yet " ;  and  on  the  centennial  of  Chan- 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     109 

ning's  birth,  April  7,  1880,  two  years  before 
his  own  death,  he  went  from  Concord  to 
Newport,  to  be  present  at  the  laying  of  the 
corner-stone  of  the  new  Channing  Memorial 
Church. 

Parker  was  no  sooner  settled  in  his  West 
Roxbury  parish  than  we  find  him  going  to 
Channing  often  for  help  in  solving  his  press 
ing  religious  problems.  He  borrows  books 
of  him,  and  discusses  with  him  Strauss's 
Life  of  Jesus.  Channing  was  now  some 
times  preaching  sermons  which  Dr.  Gannett 
thought  "  suited  to  do  more  harm  than 
good  "  ;  and  Parker  writes,  "  If  Dr.  Chan 
ning  were  a  young  man  of  five-and-twenty, 
all  unknown  to  fame,  holding  the  same  re 
ligious,  philosophical,  political,  and  social 
opinions  as  now,  and  preaching  on  them  as 
he  does,  he  could  not  find  a  place  for  the 
sole  of  his  foot  in  Boston,  though  half  a 
dozen  pulpits  were  vacant."  Years  before 
the  controversy  over  Emerson's  Harvard 
address  and  Parker's  sermon,  Channing  said : 
"  The  truth  is,  and  it  ought  not  to  be  dis 
guised,  that  our  ultimate  reliance  is  and  must 
be  upon  reason.  If  a  professed  revelation 


no      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

seems  to  us  plainly  to  disagree  with  itself  or 
clash  with  great  principles  which  we  cannot 
question,  we  ought  not  to  hesitate  in  with 
holding  from  it  our  belief.  I  am  surer  that 
my  rational  nature  is  from  God  than  that  any 
book  is  the  expression  of  his  will."  Parker 
went  often  to  a  little  club  to  which  Channing 
went,  at  the  home  of  his  friend  and  parish 
ioner,  Jonathan  Phillips ;  and  writing  of 
one  of  these  "  Socratic  meetings/'  where 
Channing  was  the  Socrates,  and  the  theme 
was  Progress,  Parker  says,  "  Had  the  con 
versation  been  written  out  by  Plato,  it  would 
equal  any  of  his  beautiful  Dialogues."  A 
week  later  the  subject  for  the  club's  discus 
sion  was  a  recent  lecture  of  Emerson's. 
Channing  was  no  more  troubled  by  Parker's 
South  Boston  sermon  than  by  Emerson's 
Harvard  address ;  and  when,  the  next  year, 
Channing  died,  Parker  wrote  to  a  friend : 
"  No  man  in  America  has  done  so  much  to 
promote  truth,  virtue,  and  religion  as  he.  I 
feel  that  I  have  lost  one  of  the  most  valu 
able  friends  I  ever  had.  His  mind  was  wide, 
and  his  heart  was  wider  yet."  In  his  jour 
nal  he  wrote,  "  No  man  since  Washington 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     in 

has  done  so  much  to  elevate  his  country. " 
Parker's  memorial  sermon  at  the  time,  and 
his  more  exhaustive  paper  in  the  Massachu 
setts  Review  a  few  years  later,  are  among 
the  noblest  tributes  ever  paid  to  Channing's 
character  and  work. 

I  link  the  names  of  Emerson  and  Parker 
here,  because  in  the  things  of  religion  they 
cannot  be  separated.*  They  stand  for  the 
same  thing.  Emerson  was  Parker  writing 
books.  Parker  was  Emerson's  truth  in  the 
pulpit.  "  What  Emerson  uttered  witho'ut 
plot  or  plan,"  William  Gannett  says  well, 
"  Theodore  Parker  elaborated  to  a  system. 
Parker  was  the  Paul  of  Transcendentalism." 
When  there  was  almost  no  warm  hand  for 

*  James  Freeman  Clarke,  reviewing  Parker's  "Discourse  of 
Matters  Pertaining  to  Religion,"  which  he  called  "  the  new  gospel  of 
shallow  naturalism,"  spoke  of  Parker  as  **  the  expounder  of  Negative 
Transcendentalism,  as  Mr.  R.  W.  Emerson  is  the  expounder  of  Positive 
Transcendentalism."  Forty  years  later  Mr.  Clarke  edited  an  edition 
of  Parker's  sermons  for  the  Unitarian  Association.  The  Unitarians 
were  holding  their  annual  festival  on  the  evening  of  the  day  in  May, 
1 8  60,  when  the  news  of  Parker's  death  reached  Boston  ;  and  then  and 
there,  from  the  depths  of  his  heart,  Mr.  Clarke,  who  twenty -two  years 
later  was  to  conduct  Emerson's  funeral  at  Concord,  paid  a  noble  tribute 
to  his  friend.  In  his  tribute  to  Emerson  prepared  for  the  Massachu 
setts  Historical  Society  he  drew  a  parallelism  between  Emerson  and 
Parker,  which  it  is  interesting  to  compare  with  his  early  word. 


ii2      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Parker  in  Boston,  it  was  his  wont  to  visit 
Emerson  often  at  Concord ;  and  he  always 
returned  to  his  work  quickened  and  inspired. 
At  one  of  Emerson's  lectures  in  Boston, 
when  the  storm  against  Parker  was  fiercest, 
a  lecture  at  which  a  score  of  the  religious 
and  literary  leaders  of  the  city  were  present, 
Emerson,  as  he  laid  his  manuscript  upon  the 
desk  and  looked  over  the  audience  after  his 
wont,  observed  Parker ;  and  immediatly  he 
stepped  from  the  platform  to  the  seat  near 
the  front  where  Parker  sat,  grasping  his 
hand  and  standing  for  a  moment's  conversa 
tion  with  him.  It  was  not  ostentation,  and 
it  was  not  patronage  :  it  was  admiring  friend 
ship, —  and  that  fortification  and  stimulus 
Parker  in  those  times  never  failed  to  feel. 
It  was  Emerson  who  fed  his  lamp,  he 
said  ;  and  Emerson  said  that,  be  the  lamp  fed 
as  it  might,  it  was  Parker  whom  the  time 
to  come  would  have  to  thank  for  finding  the 
lamp  burning.  Their  differences  in  temper 
ament  and  method  were  obvious  enough. 
Parker  wielded  the  mallet  of  Thor.  Emer 
son,  as  Dr.  Holmes  so  finely  said,  was  "  an 
iconoclast  without  a  hammer,  who  took 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     113 

down  our  idols  from  their  pedestals  so  ten 
derly  that  it  seemed  like  an  act  of  worship." 
Father  Taylor  would  not  have  been  so 
sure  of  Parker's  easy  pathway  into  heaven 
as  he  was  sure  of  Emerson's.  But  their 
aim  was  the  same.  c<  Parker,"  said  Emer 
son,  "is  the  soldier  whom  God  gave 
strength  and  will  to  fight  for  him  the 
battle  of  the  day."  "  Emerson,"  said  Parker, 
"has  a  more  glorious  history  than  any 
American  of  this  generation.  He  has  touched 
the  deepest  strings  on  the  human  harp,  and, 
ten  centuries  after  he  is  immortal,  will  wake 
music  which  he  first  waked."  He  dedicated 
to  Emerson  his  "  Ten  Sermons  of  Religion  "  ; 
and  when,  at  last,  all  broken  in  the  fight,  he 
sailed  away  in  search  of  the  health  which  he 
should  never  find,  his  greatest  comfort  was 
in  saying,  as  he  sat  on  the  deck  on  Sunday 
morning,  "  Emerson  is  preaching  at  Music 
Hall  to-day."  When  he  died  there  at 
Florence,  no  churchman's  voice  was  heard  at 
the  funeral  in  Music  Hall,  but  the  words  of 
Emerson  and  Phillips. 

"  He  has  gone  down  in  early  glory  to  his 
grave,"  said  Emerson,  "  to  be  a  living  and 


ii4     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

enlarging  power  wherever  learning,  wit, 
honest  valor,  and  independence  are  hon 
ored."  "  The  vice  charged  against  Amer 
ica/'  he  continued,  "is  the  want  of  sincerity 
in  leading  men.  It  does  not  lie  at  Parker's 
door.  He  never  kept  back  the  truth  for 
fear  to  make  an  enemy.  It  was  his  merit, 
like  Luther,  Knox,  Latimer,  and  John 
Baptist,  to  speak  tart  truth  when  that  was 
peremptory  and  when  there  were  few  to  say 
it.  As  a  reformer,  he  insisted  beyond  all 
men  in  pulpits  that  the  essence  of  Christian 
ity  is  its  practical  morals  :  it  is  there  for  use, 
or  it  is  nothing ;  and  if  you  combine  it  with 
sharp  trading  or  private  intemperance  or 
successful  fraud  or  immoral  politics  or  un 
just  wars  or  the  cheating  of  Indians,  it  is  an 
hypocrisy  and  the  truth  is  not  in  you,  .  .  . 
and  no  love  of  religious  music  or  praise  of 
John  Wesley  or  of  Jeremy  Taylor  can  save 
you  from  the  Satan  which  you  are.  Ah, 
my  brave  brother !  "  cried  Emerson  in  clos 
ing,  "  it  seems  as  if,  in  a  frivolous  age,  our 
loss  were  immense,  and  your  place  cannot 
be  supplied.  But  you  will  already  be  con 
soled  in  the  transfer  of  your  genius,  know- 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     115 

ing  well  that  the  nature  of  the  world  will 
affirm  to  all  men,  in  all  times,  that  which  for 
twenty-five  years  you  valiantly  spoke ;  that 
the  winds  of  Italy  murmur  the  same  truth 
over  your  grave,  the  winds  of  America  over 
these  bereaved  streets ;  that  the  sea  which 
bore  your  mourners  home  affirms  it,  the 
stars  in  their  courses,  and  the  inspirations  of 
youth ;  whilst  the  polished  and  pleasant 
traitors  to  human  rights,  with  perverted 
learning  and  disgraced  graces,  rot  and  are 
forgotten  with  their  double  tongue." 

Years  afterwards,  as  Emerson  wrote  his 
historic  notes  of  New  England  life  and 
thought  in  the  time  of  the  Transcendental 
movement,  published  after  his  death,  he 
paid  this  further  tribute,  not  a  few  phrases 
of  which  almost  parallel  the  lines  in  Lowell's 
famous  portrait :  "  Theodore  Parker  was 
our  Savonarola,  an  excellent  scholar,  in  frank 
and  affectionate  communication  with  the 
best  minds  of  his  day,  yet  the  tribune  of  the 
people,  and  the  stout  Reformer  to  urge  and 
defend  every  cause  of  humanity  with  and  for 
the  humblest  of  mankind.  He  was  no 
artist.  Highly  refined  persons  might  easily 


n6      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

miss  in  him  the  element  of  beauty.  What 
he  said  was  mere  fact,  almost  offended  you, 
so  bald  and  detached ;  little  cared  he.  He 
stood  altogether  for  practical  truth ;  and  so 
to  the  last.  He  used  every  day  and  hour 
of  his  short  life,  and  his  character  appeared 
in  the  last  moments  with  the  same  firm  con 
trol  as  in  the  mid-day  of  strength.  I  habit 
ually  apply  to  him  the  words  of  a  French 
philosopher  who  speaks  of  c  the  man  of 
Nature  who  abominates  the  steam-engine 
and  the  factory.  His  vast  lungs  breathe 
independence  with  the  air  of  the  mountains 
and  the  woods/ ' 

After  Parker's  death  his  society  desired 
Emerson,  the  next  autumn,  to  give  the 
first  sermon  for  them  in  Music  Hall.  The 
treatment  Parker  had  received  had  alienated 
Emerson  more  than  ever  from  the  Unita 
rians,  and  he  had  long  before  abandoned 
all  thought  of  ever  preaching  again.  But 
he  said  that  he  could  stand  where  Parker 
had  stood ;  and  he  not  only  preached  on 
that  first  Sunday,  but  spoke  in  Parker's  pulpit 
many  times  for  several  years.  He  was  the 
only  man  large  enough  for  that  place,  the 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     117 

one  man  who  stood  roundly  for  the  truth 
which  Parker  preached.  These  two  Ameri 
cans  seem  to  me  the  two  greatest  religious 
teachers  and  reformers  of  our  century, —  in 
comparably  beyond  Dollinger  and  Hyacinthe 
and  that  class  of  reformers,  whose  work 
was  really  all  done  three  hundred  years  ago ; 
wiser  far  than  Beecher  and  Bushnell  and 
Maurice  and  Stanley  and  the  sundry  sorts 
of  Broad  Churchmen,  whose  new  wine  al 
ready  spills  from  the  old  bottles  which  it 
was  foolish  to  use ;  greater  than  Carlyle,  by 
so  much  as  their  faith  in  essential  humanity 
was  greater  than  his.  The  test  of  leader 
ship  and  influence  is  the  degree  to  which 
the  thinker  seizes  and  embodies  that  which 
is  to  determine  and  abide.  Here  is  our  New 
Puritanism.  The  Erasmusisms  of  our  time, 
amiable  and  emancipated,  have  not  the  Puri 
tan  credentials.  Emerson  and  Parker, — 
these  are  they  in  whom  John  Calvin  and 
John  Milton,  George  Fox  and  William 
Penn  would  in  the  nineteenth  century 
have  found  true  and  real  kinship. 

The  first  service  which  I  wish  this  subject 
might  perform  for  us  is  to  impress  anew  the 


n8      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

duty  of  openness  to  new  ideas.  Feeble, 
indeed,  here  are  any  words  of  mine  beside 
the  emphasis  of  history  itself  and  new 
events.  I  have  thought  that  it  must  be  im 
possible  for  any  man  who  has  lived  in  these 
last  years  and  learned  two  of  their  great 
lessons  ever  again  to  be  a  bigot.  A  much 
briefer  time  than  even  my  own  life  covers 
has  seen  the  outcome  of  the  careers  of  Will 
iam  Lloyd  Garrison  and  Charles  Darwin. 
I  can  remember  a  time  when  Garrison's  life 
was  hardly  yet  safe  on  Boston  Common. 
Some  here,  not  old  men  yet,  can  remember 
when  great  rewards  were  offered  for  his 
arrest,  when  he  lay  in  jail  in  Baltimore, 
when  he  was  dragged  by  a  rope,  half-naked, 
through  the  streets  of  Boston.  We  can 
remember,  too,  how,  just  as  John  Brown's 
musketry  was  rattling  at  Harper's  Ferry,  a 
book  was  laid  on  the  library  table,  called 
"  The  Origin  of  Species  " ;  and  we  can  re 
member  the  noise  that  followed,  much  louder 
than  John  Brown's  musketry,  for  almost 
twenty  years.  "  Darwinism  "  was  the  butt 
of  every  Punch's  jokes,  the  target  of  all  satire, 
the  object  of  the  venom  and  vituperation  of 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     119 

the  pulpit  and  the  religious  newspaper.  I 
suppose  that  half  the  sermons  that  many  of 
us  have  heard  in  all  our  sermon-hearing 
Sundays  have  been  on  "  Christianity  and 
Darwinism,"  or  some  variation  of  the  theme  ; 
and  in  most  mouths  the  phrase  long  meant 
about  the  same  as  God  and  the  devil.  If 
a  preacher  confessed  Darwinism,  he  was  a 
doomed  man.  If  a  professor  confessed  Dar 
winism,  his  theological-school  days,  some 
times  his  college  days,  were  done.  If  the 
divinity  student  were  caught  hospitably 
housing  "  The  Origin  of  Species,"  it  were 
better  for  him,  so  far  as  pulpit  aspirations 
went,  that  he  had  never  been  born. 

Well,  we  saw  Garrison  borne  to  the  tomb 
amidst  the  reverence  and  tears  of  a  nation 
which,  if  it  should  build  a  monument  to 
morrow  to  commemorate  its  new  life  and 
salvation,  would  place  his  figure  at  the  front, 
as  the  central  bearer  of  the  redemptive  idea. 
And  just  as  New  England  was  bearing  Em 
erson  to  his  grave,  Old  England,  while  the 
bells  tolled  and  the  white-robed  boys  sang 
anthems,  laid  Darwin  to  rest  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  beside  Newton  and  Johnson  and 


120     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Chatham  and  Chaucer  and  those  whom  she 
delighteth  to  honor.  The  mockers  and 
satirists  of  a  few  years  ago  are  the  elegists 
and  eulogists  of  to-day.  There  are  few  men 
of  science  who  have  not  now  placed  Darwin's 
truth  alongside  the  fundamental  theories  of 
Newton  and  Copernicus  ;  and  no  pulpit  has 
yet  been  heard  from  which,  if  not  manly 
enough  to  join  in  the  panegyric,  has  been 
base  enough  to  echo  its  old  follies  or  is  not 
busy  in  the  work  of  reconstruction  and  new 
accommodation.  I  cannot  think  that  these 
two  lessons  will  easily  be  forgotten  by  this 
generation.  I  cannot  think  that  those  of  us 
who  study  politics  and  science,  or  venture  to 
speak  of  them  at  all,  will  ever,  after  witness 
ing  this  abuse  and  then  this  apotheosis  of 
Garrison  and  Darwin,  be  hurried  to  condemn 
any  thoughtful  and  earnest  man  unheard  ; 
and  I  think  that  the  Church  will  be  cautions 
before  it  again  compromises  itself  with  se 
rious  men,  swells  the  bad  reputation  of  caring 
more  for  its  creeds  than  for  the  truth,  and 
damages  the  cause  of  religion  itself,  as  it  has 
done  in  the  Darwin  controversy. 

As    the   crown    of  thorns    and    then    the 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     121 

laurel  wreath  to  Garrison  and  Darwin  in  the 
realms  of  politics  and  science,  so  in  the  realm 
of  morals  and  religion  the  rejection  of  Em 
erson  and  Parker  forty  years  ago  and  the 
glory  which  is  theirs  to-day.  I  suppose 
there  has  been  no  so  conspicuous  case  of 
persecution  in  the  American  religious  world 
in  the  century  as  that  of  Theodore  Parker, 
and  no  man  ever  who  was  the  object  of  bit 
terer  malice,  misrepresentation,  and  execra 
tion  in  his  lifetime  than  he.  He  was  a  man 
who  had  no  delight  in  controversy.  He 
was  not  by  choice  or  first  nature  a  fighter, 
though  certainly  a  better  fighter  never  lived. 
He  was  a  scholar,  with  all  the  scholar's  love 
of  quiet  and  retirement  and  the  library. 
He  was  a  man  whose  whole  warm,  affection 
ate  nature  craved  love  and  sympathy  and  the 
good  opinion  of  his  fellows.  Yet  he  was 
forced,  by  the  rank  abuses  of  the  times  and 
by  the  infidelities  of  men,  into  lifelong  con 
flict  ;  though  in  that  conflict  he  never  once 
shot  back  a  poisoned  arrow,  seldom  opened 
a  personal  controversy,  but  fought  and  con 
quered  simply  by  preaching  straight  on,  re 
gardless  of  criticism  or  abuse  on  the  right 


122      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

hand    or    the  left,  the    great    positive  prin 
ciples  of  an  irresistible  gospel. 

The  treatment  which  Parker  received 
from  those  who  advertised  themselves  as 
"liberal"  and  from  those  who  did  not  was 
much  the  same.  The  Unitarians  of  fifty 
years  ago,  as  Parker's  biographer  has  said, 
were  "  about  as  complacent  a  set  of  Chris 
tians  as  ever  took  ship  for  the  kingdom." 
It  was  not  the  heroic  age  of  Unitarianism. 
Aside  from  Dr.  Channing  and  a  dozen 
others  who  might  be  named,  the  clergy  seem 
to  have  been,  if  their  sayings  and  doings  in 
the  Emerson  and  Parker  controversies  give 
their  measure,  a  petrified  and  asphyxiated 
set  of  men,  as  destitute  of  red  blood  as 
the  pre-Raphaelite  saints.  If  they  had  any 
positive  maxim,  it  was,  to  use  a  phrase  of 
Emerson's  elsewhere  applied,  "  By  taste 
are  ye  saved,"  —  by  propriety ;  but  for  the 
most  part,  as  Emerson  himself  put  it,  their 
creed  was  only  a  "  pale  negation."  Their 
conspicuous  theological  occupation  was  to 
deny  the  divinity  of  Christ, —  a  melancholy 
business ;  and  they  had  not  yet  learned 
that  Christ  was  human.  Parker's  persua- 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     123 

sion  was  that  no  body  of  men  was  ever  more 
completely  sold  to  the  sense  of  expediency. 
They  were,  indeed,  "  the  advance  guard  of 
the  Church  militant  in  America."  They 
had  been  "  the  movement  party  in  the 
ology,"  and  had  done  a  praiseworthy  work. 
They  had  repudiated  creed  subscription, 
and  declared  the  right  of  each  man  to  in 
vestigate  for  himself  in  matters  of  religion. 
But  a  reaction  was  now  springing  up.  A 
Unitarian  orthodoxy  had  been  tacitly  agreed 
upon,  and  the  main  endeavor  of  the  elders 
seemed  to  be  to  prevent  any  sort  of  com 
motion  and  to  keep  things  decent  and  in 
order. 

When  a  man  like  Theodore  Parker  came 
into  such  a  circle  as  that,  an  honest  man  and 
a  rugged,  a  man  who  could  not  compromise, 
but  who  must  and  would  speak  out  the 
truth  that  was  in  him,  a  man  whose  every 
word  was  "  fierily  furnaced  in  the  blast 
of  a  life  that  had  struggled  in  earnest,"  — 
when  such  a  man,  I  say,  came  into  such  a 
circle,  there  could  be  but  one  result.  The 
controlling  men  of  the  denomination  said, 
This  young  man  must  be  silenced !  They 


124      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

closed  their  pulpits  and  their  periodicals  to 
him,  they  tried  to  alienate  his  little  congre 
gation,  they  wrote  abusive  letters,  they 
refused  to  occupy  the  same  platform,  to 
trade  at  the  same  shop,  to  remain  in  the 
same  room  with  him.  They  excommuni 
cated  him,  put  him  out  of  the  Church. 
Many  of  the  brethren  had  said  to  him 
before  :  "  You  are  right,  you  say  the  truth  ; 
but  it  won't  do.  Don't  preach  it.  He  that 
spits  in  the  wind  spits  in  his  own  face.  You 
will  ruin  yourself,  and  do  nobody  any 
good ! "  And,  when  the  trial  came,  man 
after  man  on  whom  Parker  had  reckoned 
for  countenance  fell  back  upon  the  old 
guard  and  was  silent.  "  Alas,"  he  wrote, 
"  for  that  man  who  consents  to  think  one 
thing  in  his  closet  and  preach  another  in 
his  pulpit !  God  shall  judge  him  in  his 
mercy.  But  over  his  study  and  over  his 
pulpit  must  be  written,  Emptiness;  on  his 
forehead  and  right  hand,  Deceit,  deceit  I  " 

If  these  things  were  done  in  the  green 
tree,  what  was  to  be  expected  in  the  dry  ? 
Parker  was  the  special  object  of  the  prayers 
and  maledictions  of  the  American  churches 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     125 

for  twenty  years.  Priestly  malice,  as  Phillips 
said,  scanned  every  inch  of  his  garment ;  but 
"  it  was  seamless,  it  could  find  no  stain." 
He  saw  men  stare  at  him  in  the  street,  and 
point  and  say,  "  That  is  Theodore  Parker !  " 
and  look  at  him  as  if  he  were  a  murderer. 
Prayer-meetings  were  held  on  his  particular 
account.  During  the  great  revival  of  1858 
it  was  recommended  that  men  and  women, 
wherever  they  might  be,  in  the  shop  or  on 
the  street,  should  pray  for  Parker  daily 
when  the  clock  struck  one.  "  We  know 
that  we  cannot  argue  him  down,"  they  said ; 
"  but,  O  Lord,  put  a  hook  in  his  jaws,  so 
that  he  may  not  be  able  to  speak !  If  he 
will  still  persist  in  speaking,  induce  the 
people  to  leave  him,  and  come  up  and  fill 
this  house  instead  of  that !  "  "  Hell  never 
vomited  forth  a  more  wicked  and  blasphe 
mous  monster  than  Theodore  Parker,"  said 
one  of  the  noted  evangelists,  "and  it  is  only 
the  mercies  of  Jesus  Christ  which  have  kept 
him  from  eternal  damnation  already  "  ;  and 
then  he  prayed  :  "  If  this  man  is  a  subject 
of  grace,  O  Lord,  convert  him  and  bring 
him  into  the  kingdom  of  thy  Son ;  but,  if 


126     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

he  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  saving  influ 
ence  of  the  gospel,  remove  him  out  of  the 
way,  and  let  his  influence  die  with  him  !  " 

And  Parker  himself  through  all  this  ?  It 
did  not  surprise  him,  for  he  knew  human 
nature.  He  knew  that  in  no  country  and 
in  no  age  would  he  have  encountered  so 
little  persecution  as  he  did  encounter.  He 
knew  that  this  bitterness  and  falsehood  were 
but  the  natural  fruits  of  the  hard  and  dark 
theology  against  which  he  rose  to  do  battle. 
"  I  knew  all  this  would  come,"  he  said. 
"It  has  come  from  my  religion;  and  I 
would  not  forego  that  religion  for  all  this 
world  can  give.  I  have  borne  sorrows  that 
bow  men  together  till  they  can  in  no  wise 
lift  up  themselves.  But  my  comfort  has 
been  the  joy  of  religion,  my  delight  is  the 
infinite  God ;  and  that  has  sustained  me." 
"  If  I  fall  and  die,"  he  said,  as  he  sailed  away, 
"let  mine  enemies  rejoice  as  much  as  they 
will  at  the  thought  that  there  is  one  feeble 
voice  the  less  rebuking  the  vice  of  the  Press, 
the  State,  the  Market,  and  the  Church ;  one 
voice  the  less  to  speak  a  word  for  truth, 
freedom,  justice,  and  natural  religion.  Let 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     127 

them  triumph  in  this ;  but  let  them  expect 
no  greater  result  to  follow  from  my  death. 
For  to  the  success  of  the  great  truths  I  have 
taught,  it  is  now  but  of  the  smallest  conse 
quence  whether  I  preach  in  Boston  and  the 
lyceums  of  the  North  or  my  body  crumbles 
in  some  quiet,  nameless  grave.  They  are 
not  my  truths.  A  great  Truth  of  Humanity 
once  set  a-going,  it  is  in  the  charge  of 
humanity.  Neither  State  nor  Press  nor 
Market  nor  Church  can  ever  put  it  down. 
It  will  drown  the  water  men  pour  on  it,  and 
quench  their  hostile  fire.  Cannot  the  Bible 
teach  its  worshippers  that  a  grave  is  no  dun 
geon  to  shut  up  Truth  in?  It  is  one  thing 
to  rejoice  at  the  sickness  and  death  of  a 
short-lived  heretic ;  but  it  is  another  and  a 
different  to  alter  the  constitution  of  the 
universe  and  put  down  a  fact  of  spon 
taneous  human  consciousness,  which  also  is 
a  Truth  of  God." 

When  he  lay  dying  there  in  Florence,  he 
said  earnestly,  in  one  of  the  gleams  of  light 
that  came  at  intervals  across  the  weakness : 
"  There  are  two  Theodore  Parkers  now, — 
one  is  dying  here  in  Italy,  the  other  1  have 


128      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

planted  in  America.  He  will  live  there, 
and  finish  my  work."  And,  as  the  sun 
looked  down  upon  the  half-dozen  mourners 
and  the  friend  who  read  the  Beatitudes  over 
his  grave  on  the  banks  of  the  Arno,  the 
same  sun  lighted  up  the  arches  of  Music 
Hall  as  his  dearer  friend,  unconscious  of 
that  scene  in  Italy,  stepped  into  his  own 
desk,  and  opened  one  of  his  own  sermons  to 
the  text,  "  Have  faith  in  God.'* 

It  was  a  Sunday  in  May,  1860,  the  year 
so  heavy  with  forebodings  of  that  final  trag 
ical  struggle  with  slavery,  so  much  more 
desperate  than  the  heroic  struggle  he  had 
himself  kept  up  so  long.  On  a  midsummer 
day  of  the  next  year,  Mrs.  Browning  was 
laid  to  rest  near  him  ;  and,  in  the  autumn 
afterward,  Arthur  Hugh  Clough.  Three 
years  more,  and  Landor  was  borne  to  the 
same  little  Protestant  graveyard  in  the 
Florence  where  Emerson  had  sought  him 
out,  on  his  first  European  journey,  thirty 
years  before.  In  the  five  years  the  four 
whose  memories  have  made  that  peaceful 
God's-acre  forever  sacred  were  there  com 
mitted  to  Italian  earth  together,  among  the 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     129 

Italian  cypresses,  beneath  the  soft  Italian 
skies.  How  many  Emerson  memories  con 
centrate  there  !  Clough,  still  at  Oxford,  had 
become  one  of  Emerson's  dearest  friends 
during  his  English  days  in  1 848  ;  and  when, 
four  years  later,  he  came  to  spend  a  year  in 
our  own  Cambridge,  it  was  at  Emerson's 
urging,  and  to  find  in  Emerson  the  Amer 
ican  whom  he  most  admired  and  loved.  It 
was  in  Emerson's  society  that  Parker  came 
to  know  him ;  and  I  think  that  no  words 
testify  with  exacter  faithfulness  the  inflexible 
faith  of  Parker  through  his  long  life-battle 
than  those  lines  of  Clough  :  — 

"  It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 
That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so  : 
That,  howsoe'er  I  stray  and  range, 
Whate'er  I  do,  Thou  dost  not  change. 
I  steadier  step  when  I  recall 
That,  if  I  slip,  Thou  dost  not  fall." 

It  is  sacramental  for  the  American  to 
stand  alone  by  Parker's  grave  in  the  little 
Florence  graveyard,  and  send  his  thoughts 
across  the  sea  as  Parker  sent  his  thoughts  in 
that  last  earthly  hour.  If  it  be  gray  No- 


130      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

vember,  with  the  cold  Alps  just  left  behind  ; 
if,  freighted  with  some  cumulation  of  dark 
facts  or  sad  misgivings,  you  be  heavy- 
hearted  and  of  little  faith ;  if  even  Giotto's 
tower  and  San  Giovanni's  gates  have  failed 
in  their  power  to  charm, —  that  stern  gray 
stone  by  the  gray  grave,  if  you  let  it  speak 
its  faithful  speech  in  the  still  hour,  will 
make  the  weak  heart  start  again  and  tell 
you  strongly  to  have  faith  in  God  and  in 
God's  triumph  in  his  world  ;  and,  as  you 
turn  back  into  the  city,  the  streets,  before 
perhaps  so  cold  and  unresponsive,  shall  be 
all  eloquent  with  history  and  beauty ;  each 
boy  upon  the  sidewalk  shall  be  a  Dante  or 
Michel  Angelo  in  making;  and  the  dear 
home  country  for  which  you  kept  such  sad 
vigil  shall  seem  haloed  by  the  sunset  as  a 
sure  potential  republic  of  God,  all  populous 
with  Parkers  and  Emersons. 

So  it  is  sacramental  at  this  hour,  when  we 
have  pictured  the  generation  gone,  with  all 
the  bigotry  and  blindness  and  "  propriety  " 
that  make  us  sick,  to  pause  and  remember 
that  Emerson  and  Parker  have  become  ac 
credited  saints  in  the  calendar,  the  Harvard 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker    131 

address  and  the  South  Boston  sermon  Uni 
tarian  tracts ;  to  remember  how  upon  the 
table  of  every  thoughtful  minister  of  relig 
ion  in  the  land,  be  he  called  "  liberal "  or 
"orthodox,"  the  Prayers  of  Parker  lie,  to 
stimulate  and  voice  devotion ;  and  feel, 
through  door  and  window,  the  air  pulsating 
still  with  the  universal  benediction  falling  on 
the  grave  of  Emerson.  And,  remembering 
and  feeling  this,  let  us  say  to  ourselves  per 
suasively,  when  hearts  seem  cold  and  the 
fight  is  long  and  the  false  seems  strong  and 
the  day  is  weary,  Have  faith  in  God  and  the 
power  of  his  might,  and  know,  indeed,  that 
one  with  him  is  a  majority. 

"  Oh,  blest  is  he  to  whom  is  given 

The  instinct  that  can  tell 
That  God  is  on  the  field,  when  he 
Is  most  invisible. 

u  And  blest  is  he  who  can  divine 

Where  real  right  doth  lie, 
And  dares  to  take  the  side  that  seems 
Wrong  to  man's  blindfold  eye." 

1  know  of  nothing  that  can  impress  more 
deeply  the  duties  of  openness  to  new  ideas, 


132     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  scorn  of  compromise,  and  of  self-reliance 
than  the  story  of  these  two  lives.  I  know 
of  nothing  grander  than  Parker's  pulpit,  as 
it  stood  there  for  twenty  years,  amid  the 
shuffling  and  truckling  of  those  times,  thun 
dering  of  righteousness  and  judgment  to 
come.  I  should  like  to  have  been  of  those 
earnest  thousands  who,  Sunday  after  Sunday, 
went  up  to  Music  Hall  to  hear  him  preach. 
No  trumped-up,  twenty-minute  speeches 
those,  confectional  and  condimental,  such  as 
some  of  our  weak-backed  congregations  sit 
through  with  difficulty  even,  but  solid  ser 
mons  of  an  hour,  or  two  hours  if  need  were, 
that  sent  the  people  home  with  their  ears 
tingling  for  a  week.  No  place  that  for  a 
lazy  head.  Men  told  him  that  he  was 
preaching  over  the  heads  of  the  people ;  but 
none  ever  had  to  tell  him  that  he  was  doing 
that  much  commoner  thing,  preaching  under 
their  feet.  Not  a  school  for  the  exquisite 
graces  of  etiquette :  Parker  was  not  a  rival 
of  the  dancing-master.  Boston  had  exhibi 
tions  plenteous  of  suaviter  in  modo ;  his 
business  was  with  for  tit  er  in  re.  "  You 
never  made  me  vour  minister,"  he  said,  "to 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     133 

flatter  or  to  please,  but  to  instruct  and 
serve."  Those  who  wore  soft  raiment,  in 
those  days,  dwelt  in  kings'  houses  ;  he  wore 
camel's  hair  and  a  leathern  girdle,  and  the 
words  fell  from  his  lips  sharp  and  rugged  as 
from  the  Baptist's, —  "  Repent !  Wrath  to 
come  !  "  He  preached  against  the  errors  of 
the  popular  theology  more  than  upon  any 
other  form  of  wrong,  for  he  felt  that  they 
were  most  fatally  mischievous  of  all.  But, 
like  all  those  New  England  Transcendental- 
ists,  he  had  much  to  say  upon  all  the  burn 
ing  questions  of  social  reform.  The  Church 
was  here  in  the  world  for  nothing  at  all,  if 
not  to  hold  up  a  higher  standard  of  life  and 
create  a  better  society.  Intemperance,  covet- 
ousness,  ignorance,  the  wrongs  of  woman,  war, 
political  corruption,  above  all,  slavery, —  like 
grape-shot  were  the  sermons  rained  upon 
them  all.  As  it  was  Garrison  who  fought 
slavery  with  the  newspaper,  and  Phillips  on 
the  bema,  and  Whittier  with  the  poem,  and 
Sumner  in  the  Senate,  and  John  Brown  on 
the  scaffold,  and  Lincoln  with  the  sword  of 
State,  so  it  was  Parker  who  fought  it  with 
the  gospel  in  the  pulpit,  while  the  church- 


134     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

men  of  good  and  regular  standing,  whose 
heads  had  felt  the  bishop's  fingers,  shivered 
before  the  bullying  of  the  slaveholders,  chat 
tered  about  Onesimus,  and  whined, "  Cursed 
be  Canaan ! " 

But  the  most  precious  of  the  great  preach 
er's  sermons  were  not  those  which  attacked 
society  nor  those  which  attacked  the 
Church,  but  those  in  which  he  lifted  his 
hearers  up  into  the  comfort  of  the  mighty 
faith  and  trust  wherewith  he  himself  was 
comforted  of  God,  and  sent  them  forth  to 
the  duties  of  life  with  the  divine  pledge  of 
victory  and  fruition.  "  The  first  time  I 
heard  Theodore  Parker  preach,"  writes 
Louisa  Alcott, —  who  has  passed  the  torch 
along  in  books  so  full  of  gospel  to  so  many 
"  little  women,"  and  to  men  as  well, —  "  was 
a  memorable  day  to  me,  as  such  occasions 
doubtless  were  to  many  others  who  '  came 
to  wonder,  and  remained  to  pray/  The 
sermon  was  addressed  to  <  laborious  young 
women/  and  was  full  of  paternal  advice,  en 
couragement,  and  sympathy  ;  but  the  prayer 
that  followed  went  straight  to  the  hearts  of 
those  for  whom  he  prayed,  not  only  com- 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     135 

forting  by  its  tenderness  and  strengthening 
by  its  brave  and  cheerful  spirit,  but  showing 
them  where  to  go  for  greater  help,  and  how 
to  ask  it  as  simply  and  confidingly  as  he  did. 
It  was  a  quiet  talk  with  God,  as  if  long  in 
tercourse  and  much  love  had  made  it  natural 
and  easy  for  the  son  to  seek  the  Father, 
confessing  faults,  asking  help,  and  submitting 
all  things  to  the  All  Wise  and  Tender  as 
freely  as  children  bring  their  little  sorrows, 
hopes,  and  fears  to  their  mother's  knee.  To 
one  laborious  young  woman,  just  setting 
forth  to  seek  her  fortune,  that  Sunday  was 
the  beginning  of  a  new  life,  that  sermon  like 
the  scroll  given  to  Christian,  that  prayer  the 
God-speed  of  one  who  was  to  her,  as  to  so 
many,  a  valiant  Great-heart  leading  pilgrims 
through  Vanity  Fair  to  the  Celestial  City." 

It  is  this  deep,  positive  religion  in  Emer 
son  and  Parker,  this  great  faith  in  God  and 
right  and  the  soul,  of  which  I  would  speak 
with  chief  emphasis,  rather  than  of  any  work 
of  theirs  against  old  superstitions  and  in  the 
service  of  free  thought.  I  think  there  are 
not  many  present  here  who  need  more  words 
on  old  superstitions  and  free  thought,  save 


136      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

to  brace  them  to  the  work  of  keeping  the 
light  shining  in  the  dark  places.  I  suppose 
that  most  of  us  are  already  "  rationalized  " 
almost  to  death ;  and  the  everlasting  on 
slaught  on  the  creeds,  necessary  as  it  is  no 
doubt,  is  wearisome  to  some  of  us,  like  the 
crackling  of  thorns  under  the  pot.  We  have 
quite  as  much  light  already  as  we  can  man 
age  well,  and  what  we  pray  for  now  is  more 
sweetness  and  very  much  more  disposition 
to  do  something.  Not  that  I  would  mini 
mize  the  great  offices  of  Emerson  and  Parker 
in  the  work  of  theological  enlightenment, 
nor  our  own  duties  in  the  same  direction. 
How  great  those  offices  were  is  best  attested 
by  the  public  sentiment  which  they  created, 
able  to  recognize  and  love  the  truth  they 
taught,  and  condemning,  in  every  enlight 
ened  place,  the  treatment  which  the  public 
sentiment  of  the  middle  of  the  century  in 
dorsed.  It  is  attested  by  the  greater  liber 
ality  in  every  church  in  the  land  that  stands 
on  the  line  of  railroad.  It  is  attested  by 
the  decay  everywhere  of  the  belief  in  the  old 
doctrines  of  infallible  books,  mechanical  cre 
ation,  and  eternal  damnation.  It  is  attested 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     137 

by  the  inaugurals  of  theological  professors, 
declaring  that  miracle  cannot  longer  be  ap 
pealed  to  as  the  test  of  truth,  and  by  the 
clear  perception  of  every  thoughtful  student 
in  the  schools  that  that  is  not  the  worthy 
conception  of  God's  universe  which  finds 
best  evidence  of  the  divine  in  prophets  rid 
ing  in  chariots  of  fire  or  in  great  fishes,  in 
the  stopping  of  the  sun  and  moon  to  light 
up  slaughter,  or  in  wonders  wrought  with 
water  and  wine  or  loaves  and  fishes,  but  that 
which  knows  that  the  highest  freedom  works 
by  perfect  law,  and  sees  "  in  the  procession  of 
the  stars,  in  every  dewdrop  and  in  every 
flower,  and  most  in  every  human  soul,  the 
working  of  the  present  God."  Our  duties  in 
the  matter  appear  wherever  these  old  doc 
trines  still  have  power,  and  men  still  endeavor 
to  put  covers  on  God's  Bible,  to  limit  God's 
activity  to  certain  sections  of  the  map,  and 
to  consign  any  soul  of  man  to  hopeless  hell. 
Wherever  men  are  found  engaged  in  the 
bad  business,  however  conscientious,  of  de 
fending  bad  doctrines  by  the  bad  method  of 
appeal  to  external  and  prescriptive  authority, 
there  we  must  still  lift  up  the  battle-flag  of 


138      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Emerson  and  Parker,  and  cry,  Turn  on  the 
lights  ! 

It  is  not  so  much  from  superstition  and 
overbelief,  however,  that  the  interests  of  re 
ligion  are  endangered  to-day  as  from  under- 
belief  and  a  withering  of  spiritual  life  in  the 
atmosphere  of  a  mechanical  philosophy  and 
ethics.  The  death-blow  has  been  given  to 
superstition.  There  are  always  men,  of 
course,  who  never  know  that  the  sun  has 
risen  until  it  is  noon ;  and  superstition  will 
yet  stagger  on  for  a  miserable  distance  before 
its  final  fall.  But  Lessing  and  Kant  struck 
its  death-blows  a  hundred  years  ago ;  it 
is  already  ghastly  from  loss  of  blood ;  and 
there  is  no  loveliness  in  it  more,  that  men 
should  desire  it.  But  in  the  breaking  up  of 
the  old  religious  sanctions  and  the  extension 
of  the  realm  of  law  to  regions  where,  before, 
men  saw  nothing  but  arbitrariness  and  im 
pulse,  God  has  seemed  to  many  to  be  pushed 
so  far  away  that  he  has  been  discounted  al 
together,  and  a  mechanism  running  rapidly 
to  a  dread  fatalism  has  seemed  to  leave  no 
place  for  the  idea  of  freedom  and  to  grind 
up  the  soul.  I  have  paid  tribute  to  Darwin 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     139 

and  his  epoch-making  service ;  but  we  must 
not  blind  ourselves  to  the  fact  that  his  sci 
ence  was  caught  up  and  fathered  by  a  poor, 
unspiritual  philosophy,  whose  identification 
with  it  in  the  minds  of  a  million  untrained 
and  uninformed  religious  men  has  abundantly 
justified  their  jealousy  and  opposition.  No 
good  science  is  so  good  as  bad  philosophy 
is  bad ;  and  it  may  seriously  be  questioned 
whether  the  major  influence  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  up  to  date  upon  religious  life 
and  thought  has  not  been  prejudicial.  It 
will  be  a  generation  yet  before  it  takes  its 
place  in  the  world's  mind  where  it  took  its 
place  in  the  mind  of  Emerson  long  before 
Darwin  wrote,  and  becomes  blessing  and  in 
spiration  unalloyed. 

Tired  of  the  false,  distorted  Jesus-worship 
of  the  churches,  many  manly  men  have 
come  to  listen  more  gladly  to  the  words  of 
almost  any  other  of  God's  sons  than  to  the 
words  of  Jesus,  and  to  be  found  with  almost 
any  other  name  upon  their  lips  rather  than 
his,  lest  the  merest  honor  to  the  name 
should  confound  them  with  the  gross  idol 
atry.  "  Let  me  never  hear  that  man's  name 


14°     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

again ! "  said  the  weary  old  Voltaire  to 
the  priests,  when  they  talked  to  him  of 
Jesus  after  their  manner;  and  no  man  of 
rugged,  stern  sincerity  but  who,  turning 
from  much  of  the  mawkish  language  of  the 
prayer-meeting  and  the  tract,  at  least  can 
understand  the  feeling  of  the  old  iconoclast. 
So  the  loquacious  and  fulsome  discipleship 
of  a  thin  unintelligence  makes  us  tire  some 
days  of  the  names  of  Bach  and  Wagner  and 
Turner  and  Browning,  of  Washington  even, 
of  Carlyle  and  of  Emerson  himself.  Tired 
of  the  superstitions,  too,  which  have  centred 
round  the  Bible,  many  have  put  their  Bible 
on  the  upper  shelf  and  thought  they  got 
more  inspiration  from  Confucius  and  the 
Brahmins,  from  the  new  poem  or  new 
novel,  or  from  the  newspaper,  than  from  the 
psalms  of  David  or  Isaiah's  proohecies,  the 
gospel  of  Christ,  or  the  letters  of  Paul. 
Tired  of  the  sluggish,  unproductive  dream 
ing  of  "a  happy  land  far,  far  away,"  they 
have  said  :  Enough  of  this  !  Here  is  work 
to  be  done,  here  are  wrongs  to  be  righted, 
here  are  men  with  no  chance,  here  is  the 
devil's  work  done  in  God's  name.  Don't 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     141 

sing  to  us  of  heaven :  we  have  only  time 
and  strength  to  work  for  a  new  earth.  And 
so  the  docrine  of  the  soul  has  suffered ;  and 
to  deny  immortality  is  thought  to  be  a 
virtue,  to  some  has  seemed  heroic.  It  is 
more  unselfish,  they  say,  to  work  nobly, 
knowing  there  is  no  hereafter  to  reward  us 
and  that  we  shall  not  see  the  fruition. 

Great  is  the  nobleness  in  much  of  this, — 
in  no  wise  to  be  confounded  ever  with  the 
shallow  and  ignoble  irreligion  whose  symp 
toms  and  whose  speech  are  oft-times  so  simi 
lar.  Greatly  nobler,  said  Parker,  is  "  the 
doubt  of  the  man  than  the  creed  of  the 
fooL"  Greatly  nobler  often  the  atheist's  Law 
than  the  churchman's  God.  Sublime  witness 
is  the  protest,  too,  to  the  fact  that  the  soul 
will  not  be  chained.  Men  hate  a  dictum  and 
a  must.  Legislate  that  your  people  shall 
admire  the  sunset,  and  the  evening  shall 
find  them  flocking  from  the  hilltops  to  the 
gulches  ;  that  all  shall  learn  "  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress  "  and  find  no  fault  in  it,  and  next 
year  each  literary  circle  shall  be  a  "  Hudi- 
bras  "  society.  We  tire  of  the  best,  will  not 
be  content  with  the  best  save  with  the  better 


142      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

and  the  good, —  not  on  terms  of  insulation. 
Only  the  All  is  sacred  and  infallible.  We 
leave  the  philosopher  to-day  for  the  plough 
man  ;  and  to-morrow  our  foeman  shall  be 
more  welcome  than  our  friend.  Dante  and 
Shakespeare  have  had  times  of  going  out  of 
fashion;  and  Beethoven  and  Michael  An- 
gelo  are  forgotten  for  Brahms  and  Botticelli 
or  the  new  Frenchman.  Yet,  all  the  while, 
the  sunset  is  beautiful,  and  Bunyan  is  bet 
ter  than  Butler,  and  best  is  best.  It  were 
better  that  we  should  read  Shakespeare 
always  than  that  we  should  think  Shelley 
and  Schiller  just  as  good ;  and  the  dilettanti 
who  live  only  to  glorify  the  pre-Raphaelites 
are  not  the  men  who  do  the  most  either  for 
art  or  manhood.  They  do,  indeed,  do 
more  for  both  than  the  devotees  of  a  sen 
timental  Guido  or  a  dainty  Carlo  Dolci, 
just  as  the  compilers  of  the  "  sacred  anthol 
ogies  "  stand  for  a  sturdier  religion  than  the 
men  who  write  the  tracts.  No  men  so  full 
of  the  "  sympathy  of  religions  "  as  Emerson 
and  Parker.  Of  Parker,  Lowell  said  truly 
enough,  if  not  indeed  quite  so  truly  as 
wittily, — 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     143 

"  His  hearers  can't  tell  you  on  Sunday  beforehand 
If  in  that  day's  discourse  you'll  be  Bibled    or 
Koraned  " ; 

and  what  other  American  brought  true 
spiritual  apprehension  to  the  truth  of  India 
and  Persia  so  early  as  Emerson  ?  But  all 
this  Orientalism  and  comparative  theology, 
which  is  the  fashion  now,  invaluable  and 
imperative  as  its  office  is  and  warmly  as  we 
welcome  it  to  its  right  place,  does  us  poor 
service,  I  think  they  would  say,  if  it  makes 
us  fancy  the  Koran  and  the  Vedas  as  great 
as  the  Bible,  or  Confucius  and  Zoroaster  as 
great  as  Christ. 

The  transcendent  merit  of  Emerson  and 
Parker  as  religious  teachers  is  that  they 
never  opposed  halfness  by  halfness,  and  were 
never  hurried  by  impatience  of  superstition 
to  irreverence  toward  the  object  of  the 
superstition.  Jesus  Christ,  the  Bible, — 
more  than  any  others  have  Emerson  and 
Parker  helped  us  to  see  their  transcendent 
pre-eminence  among  books  and  men,  be 
cause  recognizing  this  pre-eminence  on 
the  ground  of  freedom  and  pure  reason. 
"  People  imagine,"  said  Emerson,  "  that  the 


144     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

x-— * 

place  which  the  Bible  holds  in  the  world 
it  owes  to  miracle.  It  owes  it  simply  to 
the  fact  that  it  came  out  of  a  profounder 
depth  of  thought  than  any  other  book." 
"Jesus  Christ,"  he  said  again,  "alone  in 
all  history  estimated  the  greatness  of  man : 
this  one  man  was  true  to  what  is  in  you  and 
me."  And  Parker  sang :  — 

"  Thy  truth  is  still  the  light 
Which  guides  the  nations  groping  on  their  way, 

Stumbling  and  falling  in  disastrous  night, 
Yet  hoping  ever  for  the  perfect  day. 

Yes,  thou  art  still  the  life  5  thou  art  the  way 
The  holiest  know." 

This  clear  and  cultured  maintenance  at 
the  centre  —  for  it  is  a  question  of  culture, 
of  real  and  round  education  —  of  what  is 
true  and  best  comes  into  the  flimsy  anti- 
Christianism  of  a  cheap  free-thinking  like 
the  healthy  restoration  of  Shakespeare  after 
the  things  that  satisfied  the  shallow  taste  of 
Queen  Anne's  London.  The  temple  which 
we  build  of  the  prophets  and  apostles  who 
through  past  ages  have  mediated  truth  to 
men  will  lack  beauty,  proportion,  and  solid- 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker    145 

ity  unless  Jesus  Christ  be  the  chief  corner 
stone.  And  there  was  never  a  time  when 
it  was  so  important  to  say  this  strongly, 
despite  the  "  Christo-centric "  folk  who 
mechanize  and,  by  magnifying  it  into  un- 
naturalness  and  dogma,  degrade  the  truth, 
as  the  present  time,  when  the  supersti 
tions  which  have  made  a  rational  grasp 
of  Christ's  idea  so  difficult  are  fading ; 
when  society  seems  ripe  for  a  more  prac 
tical  appropriation  of  the  principles  —  which 
it  has  never  yet  applied  or  tried  —  of 
neighborhood,  equality  and  brotherhood, 
and  the  unit  value  of  the  soul,  which  he 
instinctively  divined ;  and  when  a  people 
parched  and  paralyzed  by  mechanism,  util 
ity,  and  fate  thirsteth  for  freedom  and  the 
living  God.  What  our  society  needs  to-day 
is  a  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  "  I  see  in 
the  young  men  of  this  age,"  said  Emerson, 
"character,  but  scepticism."  "They  have 
insight  and  truthfulness,  they  will  not  mask 
their  convictions,  they  hate  cant ;  but  more 
than  this  I  do  not  readily  find.  The 
gracious  motions  of  the  soul  —  piety,  adora 
tion  —  I  do  not  find.  Scorn  of  hypocrisy, 


146      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

elegance,  boundless  ambition  of  the  intellect, 
willingness  to  make  sacrifices  for  integrity 
of  character,  but  not  that  religious  submis 
sion  and  abandonment  which  give  man  a 
new  element  and  being,  and  make  him 
sublime." 

This  is  what  we  want.  The  other,  with 
out  this,  is  not  enough.  Goodness  itself, 
without  this,  lacks  its  final  grace  and  beauty. 
The  soul,  without  this,  is  in  the  end  dis 
torted,  maimed,  and  dumb.  u  Unlovely,"  said 
Emerson,  in  his  last  public  religious  utterance, 
speaking,  as  in  1838,  to  the  Harvard  stu 
dents  of  religion,  "unlovely,  nay,  frightful, 
is  the  solitude  of  the  soul  which  is  without 
God  in  the  world."  It  is  so.  The  man 
who  has  looked  into  the  pit  —  and  how 
many  such  there  have  been,  doughs,  Hallams, 
Sterlings,  Robertsons,  of  every  degree,  in 
the  sad  period  now  passing,  I  believe,  into  a 
period  more  positive  and  glad  !  —  knows  that 
it  is  so.  The  man  who  has  seen  the  sun 
shine  without  power  to  cheer,  and  who  has 
learned  to  look  into  the  starry  heavens  with 
irreverent  incuriousness,  who  hears  no  music 
in  the  rolling  sea,  and  sees  no  vision  where 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     147 

it  fades  into  the  sky,  to  whom  the  brook  in 
the  forest  sings  not,  and  who  finds  naught 
but  flint  and  granite  in  the  everlasting  hills, 
to  whom  summer  is  only  a  waiting  for  winter, 
the  earth  a  graveyard,  men  and  their  cities 
spectral,  and  his  friend  and  the  love  that 
loves  him  incredible  and  unauthentic  like  him 
self, —  he  knows  that  it  is  frightful  to  know 
no  Being  behind  the  seeming,  no  living  Will 
that  shall  endure,  no  Soul  of  beauty,  no 
everlasting  answering  Thought, —  frightful 
to  be  without  God  in  the  world.  If  my 
word  come  to  any  single  soul  who,  like  Paul 
with  beasts,  has  fought  with  death,  and  to 
whose  innermost  experience  it  speaks,  I  say 
to  you  that,  were  there  indeed  no  Soul  in 
nature  and  no  hereafter,  nobility  and  good 
ness  would  still  be  good  and  noble.  It  would 
be  better  to  love  than  to  hate,  to  help  than 
to  sleep,  to  be  brave  and  true  than  to  be  false 
and  cowards.  The  man  who  tells  you  that,  if 
this  life  be  all,  it  matters  not  what  you  do, 
preaches  swine's  gospel  and  the  devil's ;  he 
smells  of  brimstone  and  is  libertine  at  heart. 
When  the  virtue  of  eternity  is  in  a  man, — the 
fact  of  our  eternity  is  in  no  wise  dependent  on 


148     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

our  speculation, —  he  will  live  according  to 
the  forms  of  eternity,  though  his  prospect 
be  but  a  day.  If  this  life  be  all,  then  make 
it  count;  and  a  seventy  years*  lease  of  this 
universe,  with  all  its  opportunities  and  joys 
and  disciplines,  is  much.  Life  may  still  be 
great  and  noble,  I  say ;  and,  whatever  our 
philosophy,  we  are  bound,  in  reverence  of 
the  inward  mystery  and  the  horizon's  sup 
plication,  to  make  it  so.  If  the  proclama 
tion  of  a  godless  universe  and  the  soul's 
death  be  a  glad  new  evangel  that  shall  bring 
new  liberty  and  power,  as  Emerson's  and 
Parker's  gospel  brought  liberty  and  power 
in  ridding  us  of  other  chains,  then  indeed  let 
us  give  heed,  lest  haply  we  be  found  fight 
ing  against  godlessness !  If  this  gospel 
speaks  to  you  most  persuasively  in  the  hour 
of  your  highest  aspiration  and  most  self- 
sacrificing  endeavor,  listen  to  it.  Whenever 
it  comes  preached  by  the  thinker  and  the 
lover,  listen  to  it. 

"  But  if,  when  faith  has  fallen  asleep, 
You  hear  a  voice,  l  Believe  no  more,' 
And  hear  an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbles  in  a  godless  deep," 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker    149 

and  the  sound  is  not  music  to  you,  but 
a  dread  sound,  yet  if,  in  your  continuous 
round  of  business  and  society  and  cellular 
thinking,  you  have  dulled  yourself  into  com 
placent  listening,  stop,  and  ask  yourself  what 
your  life  means  and  whither  it  is  tending. 

Say  to  the  man  who  tells  you  that  faith  in 
God  is  a  hindrance  to  earth's  regeneration 
and  to  devotion  to  mankind  that,  when  the 
atheistic  teacher  comes  who  shall  prompt 
to  nobler  endeavor  than  Emerson  and  Parker, 
the  atheistic  martyr  who  shall  suffer  for  the 
suffering  more  gladly  than  John  Brown, 
the  atheistic  pioneer  of  civilization  more 
dauntless  than  the  Puritans  of  Plymouth, 
the  atheistic  apostle  of  any  truth  more  zeal 
ous  and  more  bold  than  Paul,  the  atheistic 
Christ  who  shall  inspire  self-sacrifice  more 
heroic  and  discipleship  nobler  and  purer 
than  Jesus, —  then,  but  also  not  till  then, 
will  you  believe  that  faith  in  God  is  false 
hood  to  humanity.  Believe  me,  such  poor 
notion,  though  it  may  pass  to-day,  cannot 
stand  the  test  of  life  to-morrow  and  to-mor 
row  and  to-morrow.  And  when  it  is  said 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  soul's  immortality 


150     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

is  selfish  and  harmful  to  humanity,  and  that 
a  new  earth  can  be  built  only  on  the  ruins 
of  the  faith  in  the  hereafter,  say  that  when 
you  find  yourself  tempted  to  baseness  and 
idleness  to-day  by  the  thought  that  the  sun 
will  rise  to-morrow,  when  you  find  honor  to 
your  father  and  your  mother  a  stumbling- 
stone  to  care  for  your  children,  find  your 
soul  so  shrunken  that  you  can  be  faithful  to 
a  new  friend  only  by  casting  off  an  old,  find 
yourself  a  better  citizen  through  insularity 
and  protective  laws,  and  find  yourself  in 
spired  to  help  the  sufferer  round  the  corner 
more  by  slighting  the  men  who  send  gospel 
and  schoolmaster  to  the  night  of  Africa  and 
the  isles  of  the  sea, —  then  say  you  will 
believe  it.  When  you  find  men  agreeing 
to  call  it  selfish  to  enjoy  the  sunshine  and 
the  breath  of  life,  selfish  to  lift  up  the  eyes 
unto  the  hills  and  to  stand  by  the  shore 
because  the  ocean  is  sublime  and  beautiful, 
selfish  to  open  Plato  and  Dante  and  to 
thirst  for  knowledge,  insight,  growth  and 
power,  for  any  noble  capacity  or  any  great 
opportunity, —  then,  I  say,  but  also  not  till 
then,  concede  the  faith  in  the  immortal 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     151 

nature  of  you  to  be  a  blight  upon  you  and 
upon  society  and  turn  to  the  new  evangel ; 
and  until  then  tell  the  preacher  to  go  learn 
clearer  notions  of  self-sacrifice,  and  that  he 
is  the  selfish  man  indeed  who,  save  by  sober 
est  thought  prolonged  and  resistless  con 
viction,  by  moral  imperative  and  not  the 
indulgence  of  mental  agility,  impugns  what 
the  history  of  the  deepest  thought  and  the 
dearest  hope  and  the  constitution  of  the 
soul  itself  avouch  motives  most  pure  and 
potent  to  justice,  heroism,  nobility,  and  toil. 
No,  no,  my  friends,  this  God's  universe 
and  the  souls  of  us  are  not  built  upon  any 
such  parsimonious  plan  as  that.  There  is  no 
Wall  Street  in  the  soul ;  no  exchange,  where 
to  barter  hope  for  duty.  Giving  is  getting 
there ;  and  infinite  responds  to  infinite,  and 
satisfies.  Draw  confidently  on  eternity  for 
all  the  godlike  in  you  needs ;  and  it  is  the 
spirit  of  God  that  declares  the  drafts  will  all 
be  honored.  "  What  is  excellent,"  says 
Emerson,  "  as  God  lives,  is  permanent." 
"  When  we  pronounce  the  name  of  man,  we 
pronounce  the  belief  of  immortality.  All 
great  men  find  eternity  affirmed  in  the  very 


The  Influence  of  Emerson 

promise  of  their  faculties."  It  is  so, —  be 
lieve  it ;  and,  as  incurious  about  the  hereafter 
as  about  to-morrow,  making  your  motto,  if 
you  will,  that  strong  Emersonian  word  of 
Thoreau's,  "  One  world  at  a  time ! "  live 
your  life  faithfully  and  confidently,  and  do 
this  day's  duty  well.  For  this  day,  too,  is 
God's  day  ;  and  all  eternity  is  one. 

Our  debt  to  Emerson  and  Parker,  I  say, 
is  greatest,  not  for  their  onslaughts  on 
debasing  superstitions  and  their  service  to 
free  thought,  but  for  a  faith  made  perfect 
in  reason  in  the  soul's  freedom  and  great 
affirmations,  the  eternal  right,  the  immortal 
life,  and  the  infinite  God.  My  brothers, 
let  not  the  torch  shine  dimmer  for  having 
come  to  our  hands  in  its  progress  !  Infinite 
is  the  responsibility  laid  upon  us.  Our 
prophets  are  falling  in  the  high  places. 
These  have  been  years  of  death.  Upon 
the  heads  of  Whittier  and  Martineau  and 
Tennyson  the  hoar-frost  already  lay  as 
Emerson  went.  The  tolling  of  the  bells 
of  Concord  spoke  not  only  of  the  passing 
of  Emerson,  but  of  the  closing  of  an  era, 
and  told  us  that  we  are  left  to  ourselves 


Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker     153 

now.  It  is  the  signal  for  higher  duties  and 
the  call  to  nobler  manhood.  Thank  God 
for  these  good  men  and  great,  but  say,  as 
they  have  taught  us,  I  also  am  a  man,  and 
vow  to  do  your  little  task,  if  it  be  little, 
even  as  they  did  their  great  ones,  "  in  the 
manner  of  a  true  man,  not  for  a  day,  but 
for  eternity  "  ;  to  live  as  they  counselled  and 
commanded,  "  not  commodiously,  in  the  re 
putable,  the  plausible,  the  half,  but  reso 
lutely,  in  the  whole,  the  good,  the  true.0 


Ill 

Emerson  and  Carlyle 


EMERSON  AND  CARLYLE 

IT  has  often  happened  that  our  writers  of 
history,  in  describing  some  striking  and  sig 
nificant  event,  have  expressed  the  wish  that 
some  painter  might  be  moved  to  reproduce 
it  graphically  upon  his  canvas ;  and  not  in 
frequently  they  have  furnished  the  painter 
the  fullest  and  most  vivid  details.  I  once 
brought  together  a  dozen  such  passages  in 
a  magazine  paper ;  and  bread  cast  upon  the 
waters  seldom  comes  back  in  fewer  days, — 
for  the  painter  of  one  of  the  new  historical 
pictures  in  the  Memorial  Hall  in  our  Mas 
sachusetts  State  House,  whom  1  met  during 
his  work,  drew  a  worn  copy  of  the  paper 
from  his  pocket,  and  told  me  that  he  owed 
to  it  the  suggestion  of  his  subject  and  his 
prompting.  I  wish  that  I  might  likewise 
prompt  some  painter  to  ponder  upon  the 
impressive  scene  in  the  rooms  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Historical  Society  when  Emerson, 
on  the  day  of  Carlyle's  burial,  there  read  his 
final  tribute  to  his  friend.  I  think  that  few 


158     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

scenes  in  our  literary  history  have  been  more 
impressive  or  significant  than  that.  I  wish 
that  picture  might  hang  upon  the  walls  of 
the  Society's  new  building,  or  that  it  might 
dignify  by  and  by  the  walls  of  the  new  home 
of  the  Boston  Athenaeum, —  the  Athenaeum 
which  Emerson  so  dearly  loved,  and  upon 
which  he  pronounced  his  warm  benediction. 
Of  this  memorable  scene  it  chances  also  that 
the  vivid  details  have  been  furnished  the 
painter  by  the  historian, —  by  Dr.  Ellis,  the 
vice-president,  afterwards  the  president,  of 
the  Historical  Society. 

The  reading  of  this  tribute  to  Carlyle  be 
fore  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
was  Emerson's  last  public  act,  save  only  one 
lecture  at  Concord.  It  was  a  memorable 
period  to  a  relation  as  memorable  as  the 
friendship  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  in  Ger 
many.  It  is,  indeed,  a  memorable  thing  that 
these  two  men,  greatest  teachers  of  truth  to 
the  England  and  America  of  their  time, 
should  have  found  each  other  out  so  quickly, 
been  drawn  together  so  unerringly,  and  stood 
by  each  other,  through  all  differences  of  con 
ception,  aim,  and  method,  so  faithfully. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  159 

Often  as  it  has  been  recurred  to  in  these 
days,  there  is  not  danger  that  we  shall  think 
too  much  about  it. 

Carlyle  was  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Historical  Society.  Mr.  Winthrop,  the  pres 
ident,  upon  hearing  of  his  death,  wrote  at 
once  to  Mr.  Emerson  to  insure  his  attend 
ance  at  the  commemorative  hour  which 
had  been  appointed.  It  was  felt  that  he  was 
the  only  man  who,  by  the  warmest  relations 
of  personal  friendship  and  the  sympathies 
of  kindred  genius,  could  fill  the  demands  of 
that  occasion.  The  scene  was  a  memorable 
one, —  a  scene,  writes  Dr.  Ellis,  "  never  to  be 
forgotten  by  those  who  felt  what  a  privilege 
they  enjoyed  in  taking  the  full  impression 
of  it,  with  all  its  vividness  and  suggestive- 
ness,  into  heart  and  thought."  It  was  on 
the  day,  perhaps  the  very  hour,  when  Car 
lyle  was  being  laid  to  rest  in  silence,  by  his 
old  friends  and  the  neighbors  of  his  youth, 
in  Ecclefechan  churchyard.  "  A  small  table, 
with  two  chairs  for  Mr.  Emerson  and  his 
daughter,  was  brought  into  the  Dowse  libra- 
rary-room,  where  the  meeting  was  held.  The 
manuscript,  long  since  written,  but  never 


160      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

put  in  print,  was  a  loose  one,  and  only  parts 
of  it  were  to  be  read  by  Mr.  Emerson.  Of 
the  incommunicable  features  of  the  scene, 
very  touching  to  its  witnesses  was  his  gentle 
reference  and  compliance  as  he  looked  to  his 
daughter  for  direction  as  to  the  passages  to 
be  read,  and  to  the  connection  of  them. 
Some  slight  labial  impediments  caused  an 
occasional  halting  in  the  delivery  of  elon 
gated  words,  never  favorites  with  Mr.  Emer 
son.  These  served,  in  part,  for  those  delays 
on  words  which  are  so  familiar  to  his  hearers 
as  marking  his  pauses  and  emphasis.  For 
the  rest,  he  was  helped  in  the  initiative 
utterances  of  them  by  the  silent  lips  of  his 
daughter.  The  apt  and  racy  significance  of 
the  most  pointed  passages  came  forth  in  full 
force  and  with  the  old  incisiveness  and 
humor.  So  hushed  was  the  silence,  and  so 
intent  was  the  listening,  that  those  who  were 
quick  of  hearing  lost  nothing  of  word  or  in 
tonation.  But  even  these,  the  more  removed 
in  their  seats,  one  by  one  drew  nearer  in  a 
closing  circle  around  the  reader.  Their  faces 
and  inward  workings  of  thought  showed  the 
profoundness  of  their  interest,  as  they  waited 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  161 

for  the  interpretation  of  the  great  philoso 
pher  of  England  by  the  greatest  philosopher 
of  America."* 

What  Emerson  read  had  been  written 
thirty  years  and  more  before,  written  while 
he  was  staying  with  Carlyle  during  his 
London  lecturing,  in  1848.  The  thirty 
years  with  all  that  they  had  brought  had 
made  him  wish  to  alter  no  word  that  he 
had  ever  written  of  Carlyle.  Carlyle  had 
lamented  and  cursed  in  plenty  meantime, 
he  had  gone  up  the  scale  and  down  it,  and 
had  left  almost  nothing  free  from  his  knout 
and  besom.  The  dapper  men  who  write 
the  tales  and  the  women  with  "  three  yearn 
ings  and  a  hope "  made  up  their  minds 
about  him  ;  the  stewards  of  the  etiquettes 
and  the  amiabilities  and  the  craftsmen  in 
the  literary  dainties  voted  that  there  was 
no  good  in  him,  and  that  the  clown  in  him 
was  devil ;  and  the  men  of  the  silver 

*Dr.  Ellis' s  account  was  published  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  May, 
1881,  along  with  Emerson's  paper.  The  latter  was  also  printed  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Historical  Society,  and  is  included  in  Vol.  X.  of 
Emerson's  Works.  It  was  with  a  reference  to  this  tribute  of  Emerson 
to  Carlyle  that  Dr.  Ellis  introduced  his  own  tribute  to  Emerson  before 
the  Historical  Society  the  next  year. 


1 62      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

spoons,  the  "gig-men,"  who  never  waited 
in  Chesterfield's  lobby,  never  knew  what 
heartache  was  or  headache  or  anarchy  at 
the  pit  of  the  stomach,  and  never  ran  the 
risk  of  discomfiture  because  never  prompted 
to  fly  their  kites  high, —  these  in  the  days 
after  "  Reminiscences  "  fed  on  the  cartoons 
and  the  caricatures  of  him,  and,  like  the 
Gaza  mob  in  Dagon's  house,  laughed 
at  his  cries,  over  their  reduced  claret  and 
"  Leisure  Hour  Series,"  and  had  a  notion 
that  his  cries  were  the  summing-up  of  him. 
How  petty  and  pitiful  they  all  are,  seen 
from  that  little  upper  room  above  the  old 
Puritan  graveyard  !  and  how  inconsiderable 
quite  their  dainty  and  proper  criticisms 
beside  this  life-long,  stanch,  and  changeless 
friendship  of  him  who  truly,  as  Carlyle 
himself  well  said,  "  had  not  his  equal  on 
earth  for  perception,"  who  knew  Carlyle 
better  than  he  knew  himself,  and  knew 
him,  with  all  his  biliousness  and  limitations, 
for  the  giant  figure  of  severe  sincerity,  in 
flexible  righteousness,  and  lofty  purpose, 
which  all  the  world  comes  to  know  him 
for,  as  his  story  is  all  told,  as  it  has  gradually 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  163 

been  told,  nothing  extenuated  and  naught 
set  down  in  malice ! 

Much  has  been  written  upon  the  remark 
able  personal  relations  of  Carlyle  and  Em 
erson,  and  upon  the  affinities  and  striking 
contrasts  of  their  genius.  Again  and  again, 
now  that  the  two  lives  are  rounded,  our 
thoughts  turn  irresistibly  to  the  old  theme. 

The  last  time  that  Emerson  left  Concord 
it  was  to  attend  the  funeral  of  Longfellow  at 
Cambridge,  just  a  month  before  his  own 
death.  Fifty  years  before,  almost,  in  1835, 
Longfellow,  just  called  to  Harvard,  went  to 
Europe,  with  a  letter  of  introduction  from 
Emerson  to  Carlyle.  Carlyle  had  just  come 
up  to  London  and  settled  in  Cheyne  Row. 
It  was  two  years  after  Emerson  had  first 
met  him  among  the  dreary  Craigenputtock 
moors.  His  coming  to  Craigenputtock, 
said  Carlyle  to  Longfellow  then,  was  "  like 
the  visit  of  an  angel."  From  that  time  till 
the  end  of  life  the  friendship  formed  so 
highly  was  highly  maintained,  and  to  high 
issues.  To  no  other  living  writer  was 
Emerson  drawn  so  closely  as  to  Carlyle ; 
and  Carlyle,  among  the  "  narrow  built, 


164     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

considerably  perverted  men "  of  London, 
wrote,  "  I  hear  but  one  voice,  and  that 
comes  from  Concord."  "Words  cannot 
tell,"  he  said,  "  how  I  prize  the  old  friend 
ship  formed  there  on  Craigenputtock  Hill, 
or  how  deeply  I  have  felt  in  all  that 
Emerson  has  written  the  same  aspiring  in 
telligence  which  shone  about  us  when  he 
came  as  a  young  man,  and  left  with  us  a 
memory  always  cherished." 

It  was  in  1833  that  Emerson's  first  visit 
to  Carlyle  occurred, —  the  year  after  his 
withdrawal  from  the  ministry.  But  he  had 
been  reading  Carlyle  already  for  five  years. 
Carlyle's  essays  were  speaking  to  many 
youthful  minds  in  New  England,  as  Emer 
son  himself  said,  "  with  an  emphasis  that 
hindered  them  from  sleep."  It  was  in  1828 
that  Emerson  began  to  read  Carlyle's 
articles  in  the  English  and  Scotch  reviews, 
long  before  he  found  out  that  the  writer  was 
"  a  Thomas  Carlyle."  It  was  just  then  that 
he  wrote  the  poem, — 

"  Good-bye,  proud  world  !   I'm  going  home," — 
that  first  clear  utterance  of  his  high  ideals 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  165 

and  his  scorn  of  sham  and  show.  It  was 
natural  that  at  such  a  time  his  heart  should 
beat  in  quick  response  to  the  sincere  and 
ringing  words  of  the  author  of  the  Life 
of  Schiller  and  the  articles  on  "  German 
Literature  "  and  "  Richter."  He  writes  of 
this  author,  still  unknown,  in  his  journal 
in  1832:  "I  am  cheered  and  instructed 
by  this  paper  on  c  Corn  Law  Rhymes/  in 
the  Edinburgh,  by  my  Germanic  new-light 
writer,  whoever  he  may  be.  He  gives  us 
confidence  in  our  principles.  He  assures 
the  truth-lover  everywhere  of  sympathy. 
Blessed  art  that  makes  books,  and  so  joins 
me  to  that  stranger  by  this  perfect  rail 
road  ! " 

Emerson  read  "Wilhelm  Meister"  in 
Carlyle's  translation ;  and  he  read  the 
"Burns"  and  "  Novalis  "  and  "  Voltaire" 
and  "Johnson"  and  "Signs  of  the  Times." 
u  Characteristics  "  appeared  just  as  Emerson 
was  breaking  his  Unitarian  fetters.  Carlyle, 
too,  now  writes  in  his  journal,  "  Have  long 
known  the  Unitarians  intus  et  in  cutey  and 
never  got  any  good  of  themy  or  any  ill."  A 
wish  to  see  Carlyle  had  been  a  factor  in  de- 


1 66      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

termining  Emerson's  voyage  to  Europe  just 
after  his  farewell  to  his  church  in  1832. 
He  is  looking  forward  to  this  in  Florence, 
where,  after  meeting  Lander,  he  wrote  :  "  It  is 
a  mean  thing  that  literary  men,  philosophers, 
cannot  work  themselves  clear  of  this  ambi 
tion  to  appear  men  of  the  world, —  as  if  every 
dandy  did  not  understand  his  business  better 
than  they.  I  hope  better  things  of  Carlyle, 
who  has  lashed  the  same  folly."  In  Rome 
he  met  a  friend  of  Carlyle,  M.  Gustave 
d'Eichthal,  who  gave  him  a  letter  of  introduc 
tion  to  Carlyle.  John  Stuart  Mill,  whom 
he  met  in  London,  also  gave  him  an  intro 
duction.  In  Italy  his  greatest  want  is  that 
he  "  never  meets  with  men  that  are  great  or 
interesting " ;  and  in  Paris  he  writes  in  his 
journal :  "  A  man  who  was  no  courtier,  but 
loved  men,  went  to  Rome,  and  there  lived 
with  boys.  He  came  to  France,  and  in 
Paris  lives  alone,  and  in  Paris  seldom 
speaks.  If  he  do  not  see  Carlyle  in  Edin 
burgh,  he  may  go  back  to  America  without 
saying  anything  in  earnest,  except  to  Cranch 
and  Landor."  At  Edinburgh,  where  he 
preached  at  the  Unitarian  chapel  and  where 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  167 

he  first  met  Alexander  Ireland,  he  found 
difficulty  in  discovering  Carlyle's  wherea 
bouts,  but  finally  learned  from  the  secretary 
of  the  university  that  he  was  at  Craigenput 
tock,  where  he  had  been  living  for  the  last 
five  years  ;  and  to  Craigenputtock  Emerson 
drove  across  the  country  from  Dumfries. 

In  August,  1833,  Carlyle  was  more  than 
usually  despondent  among  his  pigs  and  pots 
at  Craigenputtock ;  and  the  usual  despond 
ency  was  bad  enough.  On  the  24th  of 
August  we  find  him  writing  in  his  journal : 
"  So  now  all  this  racketing  and  riding  has 
ended,  and  I  am  left  here  the  solitariest 
stranded,  most  helpless  creature  that  I  have 
been  for  many  years.  Months  of  suffering 
and  painful  indolence  I  see  before  me ;  for 
in  much  I  am  wrong,  and  till  it  is  righted, 
or  on  the  way  to  being  so,  I  cannot  help 
myself.  .  .  .  The  idea  of  the  universe 
struggles  dark  and  painful  in  me,  which 
I  must  deliver  out  of  me  or  be  wretched." 

"The  next  entry  in  the  Journal,"  says 
Mr.  Froude,  "is  in  another  handwriting. 
It  is  merely  a  name  — '  Ralph  Waldo  Emer 
son.'  The  Carlyles  were  sitting  alone  at  din- 


1 68      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

ner  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  at  the  end  of 
August,  when  a  Dumfries  carriage  drove  to 
the  door,  and  there  stepped  out  of  it  a  young 
American,  then  unknown  to  fame,  but  whose 
influence  in  his  own  country  equals  that  of 
Carlyle  in  ours,  and  whose  name  stands  con 
nected  with  his  wherever  the  English  lan 
guage  is  spoken.  He  had  read  Carlyle's 
articles  and  had  discerned  with  the  instinct 
of  genius  that  here  was  a  voice  speaking  real 
and  fiery  convictions,  and  no  longer  echoes 
and  conventionalisms.  He  had  come  to 
Europe  to  study  its  social  and  spiritual 
phenomena ;  and  to  the  young  Emerson,  as 
to  the  old  Goethe,  the  most  important  of 
them  appeared  to  be  Carlyle." 

Of  this  famous  first  visit  of  Emerson  to 
Carlyle  we  have  accounts  from  both  parties ; 
and  Emerson's  account  is  doubly  valuable, 
since  it  is  the  only  sketch  we  have  of  Carlyle's 
life  at  Craigenputtock  as  it  was  seen  by  others. 
We  have  indeed  two  accounts  of  the  visit 
from  Emerson, —  besides  the  well-known 
passage  in  "  English  Traits/'  the  interesting 
letter  to  Mr.  Ireland.  The  passage  in  "  Eng 
lish  Traits,"  with  its  pictures  of  Carlyle's  tall, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  169 

gaunt  form  and  cliff-like  brow,  his  northern 
accent  and  anecdote  and  humor,  the  loveli 
ness  of  Craigenputtock,  the  talk  of  pigs  and 
pauperism,  the  satirical  views  of  literature,  is 
too  familiar  to  need  much  quoting  again. 
"  We  went  out  to  walk  over  long  hills,  and 
looked  at  Criffel,  then  without  his  cap,  and 
down  into  Wordsworth's  country.  There 
we  sat  down  and  talked  of  the  immortality 
of  the  soul.  It  was  not  Carlyle's  fault  that 
we  talked  on  that  topic,  for  he  has  the  nat 
ural  disinclination  of  every  nimble  spirit  to 
bruise  itself  against  walls,  and  did  not  like  to 
place  himself  where  no  step  can  be  taken. 
But  he  was  honest  and  true,  and  cognizant 
of  the  subtle  links  that  bind  ages  together, 
and  saw  how  every  event  affects  all  the  future. 
c  Christ  died  on  the  tree  :  that  built  Dunscore 
kirk  yonder;  that  brought  you  and  me 
together.' " 

"  I  spent  near  twenty-four  hours  with 
him,"  Emerson  writes  to  Mr.  Ireland. 
"He  lives  with  his  wife,  a  most  agreeable 
and  accomplished  woman,  in  perfect  solitude. 
There  is  not  a  person  to  speak  to  within 
seven  miles.  He  is  the  most  simple,  frank, 


1 7°     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

amiable  person.  I  became  acquainted  with 
him  at  once ;  we  walked  over  several  miles 
of  hills  and  talked  upon  all  the  great  ques 
tions  which  interest  us  most.  The  comfort 
of  meeting  a  man  of  genius  is  that  he  speaks 
sincerely,  that  he  feels  himself  to  be  so  rich 
that  he  is  above  the  meanness  of  pretending 
to  knowledge  which  he  has  not;  and  Car- 
lyle  does  not  pretend  to  have  solved  the 
great  problems,  but  rather  to  be  an  observer 
of  their  solution  as  it  goes  forward  in  the 
world.  I  asked  him  at  what  religious  de 
velopment  the  concluding  passage  in  his 
piece  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  upon  German 
literature,  and  some  passages  in  the  piece 
called  '  Characteristics/  pointed.  He  re 
plied  that  he  was  not  competent  to  state  it 
even  to  himself;  he  wanted  rather  to  see. 
My  own  feeling  was  that  I  had  met  with 
men  of  far  less  power  who  had  yet  greater 
insight  into  religious  truth.  He  is,  as  you 
might  guess  from  his  papers,  the  most  catho 
lic  of  philosophers ;  he  forgives  and  loves 
everybody,  and  wishes  each  to  struggle  on 
in  his  own  place  and  arrive  at  his  own  ends. 
But  his  respect  for  eminent  men,  or  rather 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  171 

his  scale  of  eminence,  is  rather  the  reverse 
of  the  popular  scale.  Scott,  Mackintosh, 
Jeffrey,  Gibbon  —  even  Bacon  —  are  no 
heroes  of  his.  Stranger  yet,  he  hardly  ad 
mires  Socrates,  the  glory  of  the  Greek 
world ;  but  Burns  and  Samuel  Johnson. 
Mirabeau,  he  said,  interested  him ;  and  I 
suppose  whoever  else  has  given  himself 
with  all  his  heart  to  a  leading  instinct,  and 
has  not  calculated  too  much.  .  .  .  He  talks 
finely,  seems  to  love  the  broad  Scotch,  and 
I  loved  him  very  much  at  once.  I  am  afraid 
he  finds  his  entire  solitude  tedious ;  but  I 
could  not  help  congratulating  him  upon 
his  treasure  in  his  wife,  and  I  hope  they 
will  not  leave  the  moors,  'tis  so  much  better 
for  a  man  of  letters  to  nurse  himself  in  se 
clusion  than  to  be  filed  down  to  the  com 
mon  level  by  the  compliances  and  imitations 
of  city  society." 

Still  another  word  of  Emerson's  we  get 
concerning  Carlyle  at  this  time, —  a  word  in 
his  journal  a  day  or  two  after  the  visit :  "  I 
never  saw  more  amiableness  than  is  in  his 
countenance.  T.  C.  has  made  up  his  mind 
to  pay  his  taxes  to  William  and  Adelaide 


172      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Guelf,  with  great  cheerfulness,  as  long  as 
William  is  able  to  compel  the  payment, 
and  shall  cease  to  do  so  the  moment  he 
ceases  to  compel  them.  T.  C.  prefers  Lon 
don  to  any  other  place  to  live  in.  John  S. 
Mill  the  best  mind  he  knows :  more  purity, 
more  force ;  has  worked  himself  clear  from 
Benthamism.  His  only  companion  to  speak 
to  was  the  minister  of  Dunscore  kirk. 
And  he  used  to  go  sometimes  to  the  kirk, 
and  envy  the  poor  parishioners  their  good 
faith.  But  he  seldom  went,  and  the  min 
ister  had  grown  suspicious  of  them  and  did 
not  come  to  see  them.'1  Waiting  through 
tedious,  stormy  days  at  Liverpool  for  his 
ship  to  sail,  he  sighed  for  Carlyle :  "  Ah  me, 
Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle,  I  would  give  a  gold 
pound  for  your  wise  company  this  gloomy 
evening/'  He  writes  about  Carlyle  during 
the  voyage,  in  that  wonderful  confession  of 
his  own  religious  thought  and  feeling. 
Soon  after  his  arrival  home  he  wrote  to 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  then  in  Louisville, 
who  in  a  note  had  asked  him  concerning 
Carlyle  :  "  My  recollections  of  him  are  most 
pleasant,  and  I  feel  great  confidence  in  his 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  173 

character.  He  understands  and  recognizes 
his  mission.  He  is  perfectly  simple  and 
affectionate  in  his  manner,  and  frank,  as  he 
can  well  afford  to  be,  in  his  communications. 
He  expressed  some  impatience  of  his  total 
solitude,  and  talked  of  Paris  as  a  residence. 
I  told  him  I  hoped  not;  for  I  should  al 
ways  remember  him  with  respect,  meditating 
in  the  mountains  of  Nithsdale.  He  was 
cheered,  as  he  ought  to  be,  by  learning 
that  his  papers  were  read  with  interest  by 
young  men  unknown  to  him  in  this  conti 
nent  ;  and  when  I  specified  a  piece  which 
had  attracted  warm  commendation  from  the 
New  Jerusalem  people  here,  his  wife  said 
that  is  always  the  way ;  whatever  he  has 
writ  that  he  thinks  has  fallen  dead,  he  hears 
of  two  or  three  years  afterward.  He  has 
many,  many  tokens  of  Goethe's  regard, 
miniatures,  medals,  and  many  letters.  .  .  . 
He  told  me  he  had  a  book  which  he 
thought  to  publish,  but  was  in  the  pur 
pose  of  dividing  into  a  series  of  articles 
for  c  Eraser's  Magazine/  I  therefore  sub 
scribed  for  that  book,  which  he  calls  the 
'  Mud  Magazine.'  " 


174     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Emerson  stayed  over  night,  and  went 
to  Dumfries  in  the  morning.  Two  days 
later  Carlyle  writes  an  account  of  the  visit 
to  his  mother.  "Our  third  happiness," 
he  says,  telling  of  three  happinesses  that 
had  befallen  them  at  Craigenputtock,  "was 
the  arrival  of  a  certain  young  unknown 
friend,  named  Emerson,  from  Boston,  in 
the  United  States,  who  turned  aside  so  far 
from  his  British,  French  and  Italian  travels 
to  see  me  here  !  He  had  an  introduction 
from  Mill  and  a  Frenchman  (Baron  d'Eich- 
thal's  nephew)  whom  John  knew  at  Rome. 
Of  course  we  could  do  no  other  than  wel 
come  him,  the  rather  as  he  seemed  to  be 
one  of  the  most  lovable  creatures  in  him 
self  we  had  ever  looked  on.  He  stayed  till 
next  day  with  us,  and  talked  and  heard  talk 
to  his  heart's  content ;  and  left  us  all  really 
sad  to  part  with  him.  Jane  says  it  is  the  first 
journey  since  Noah's  Deluge  undertaken  to 
Craigenputtock  for  such  a  purpose." 

Carlyle  recurs  to  this  visit  again  and  again. 
It  had  been  to  him  a  red-letter  day.  He 
speaks  of  it  to  the  Americans  who  come  to 
Cheyne  Row,  as  the  time  "when  that  super- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  175 

nal  vision,  Waldo  Emerson,  dawned  on 
me."  "Of  you,"  wrote  Margaret  Fuller  to 
Emerson,  in  1846,  telling  of  her  visit  to 
Carlyle,  "  he  spoke  with  hearty  kindness ; 
and  he  told,  with  beautiful  feeling,  a  story 
of  some  poor  farmer,  or  artisan,  in  the  coun 
try,  who  on  Sunday  lays  aside  the  cark  and 
care  of  that  dirty  English  world  and  sits 
reading  the  Essays  and  looking  upon  the 
sea."  To  Lord  Houghton  he  said  :  "  That 
man  came  to  see  me,  I  don't  know  what 
brought  him,  and  we  kept  him  one  night, 
and  then  he  left  us.  I  saw  him  go  up  the 
hill ;  I  didn't  go  with  him  to  see  him  de 
scend.  I  preferred  to  watch  him  mount  and 
vanish  like  an  angel."  In  the  same  spirit 
Mrs.  Carlyle  writes  to  Emerson :  "  Friend, 
who  years  ago,  in  the  Desert,  descended  on 
us,  out  of  the  clouds  as  it  were,  and  made 
one  day  there  look  like  enchantment  for  us, 
and  left  me  weeping  that  it  was  only  one 
day."  Carlyle  dwells  fondly  upon  it  the 
evening  after  his  address  as  Lord  Rector  of 
Edinburgh,  when  his  heart  was  mellowed 
and  he  lived  his  life  over ;  and  it  finds  a 
place  also  in  his  "  Reminiscences  "  :  "  The 


ij6     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

visit  of  Emerson  from  Concord,  and  our 
quiet  night  of  clear  fine  talk,  was  also  very 
pretty  to  both  of  us." 

Emerson,  rejoicing  in  his  own  escape  from 
the  "  weary  crowd  "  and  cc  learned  clan  "  of 
Boston  to  the  quiet  fields  and  lanes  of  Con 
cord,  where  man  could  meet  with  God  in 
the  bush,  hoped  that  Carlyle  would  not 
leave  the  moors.  But  already,  as  Emerson 
himself  noted,  Carlyle's  eyes  were  turning 
toward  London.  cc  Sartor  Resartus "  was 
already  written  and  lying  in  Eraser's  drawer ; 
and  when  Longfellow,  two  years  later,  went 
to  England,  carrying  Emerson's  letter,  Car 
lyle  had  been  living  in  London  a  year,  and 
"  Sartor  "  had  all  been  given  piecemeal  to  the 
world.  Not  to  a  very  large  world.  When 
it  began  to  appear,  no  Englishman  could  tell 
what  to  make  of  it.  The  writer  was  consid 
ered  a  maniac,  and  the  unlucky  editor  began 
to  dread  the  ruin  of  his  magazine.  "  c  Teu- 
felsdrockh '  beyond  measure  unpopular ;  an 
oldest  subscriber  came  in  to  him  and  said, 
c  If  there  is  any  more  of  that  d  —  d  stuff  I 
will,'  etc.,  etc. ;  on  the  other  hand,  an  order 
from  America  to  send  a  copy  of  the  magazine 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  177 

so  long  as  there  was  anything  of  Carlyle's 
in  it."  The  almost  utter  lack  of  apprecia 
tion  in  London  soon  flung  Carlyle  back  into 
a  despondency  greater,  if  possible,  than  any 
ever  revealed  by  the  journal  at  Craigenput- 
tock.  "  My  state  has  been  one  of  those  it 
was  almost  frightful  to  speak  of,"  is  the  first 
entry  in  his  journal  at  Cheyne  Row,  scarcely 
a  month  after  the  settlement  there.  "  Mood 
tragical,  gloomy,  as  of  one  forsaken,  who  had 
nothing  left  him  but  to  get  through  his  task 
and  die.  Despicablest  fears  of  coming  to 
absolute  beggary,  etc/'  "  In  the  midst  of 
innumerable  discouragements,"  he  adds,  "  let 
me  mention  two  small  circumstances  that  are 
comfortable.  The  first  is  a  letter  from 
some  nameless  Irishman  in  Cork  (Fraser 
read  it  to  me)  actually  containing  a  true 
and  one  of  the  friendliest  possible  recogni 
tions.  .  .  .  The  second  is  a  letter  I  got 
to-day  from  Emerson,  of  Boston  in  America ; 
sincere,  not  baseless,  of  most  exaggerated 
estimation.  Precious  is  man  to  man." 

The  correspondence  between  Carlyle  and 
Emerson,  which  fills  so  important  a  place  in 
the  lives  of  the  two  men,  was  now  well 


178      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

begun.  The  first  letter  in  this  famous 
correspondence  was  written  by  Emerson, 
May  14,  1834;  the  last  by  Carlyle,  April 
2,  1872.  Of  this  correspondence  Whipple 
justly  says:  "In  richness  and  fulness  of 
matter,  there  is  nothing  superior,  nothing, 
one  is  prompted  to  say,  equal  to  it  in 
literary  annals."  Nowhere  else  are  the 
deep  sympathies  and  sharp  differences  of  the 
writers  so  strikingly  revealed.  Dr.  Holmes 
estimates  it  well :  "  The  hatred  of  unreality 
was  uppermost  with  Carlyle ;  the  love  of 
what  is  real  and  genuine  with  Emerson. 
Those  old  moralists,  the  weeping  and  the 
laughing  philosophers,  find  their  counter 
parts  in  every  thinking  community.  Car 
lyle  did  not  weep,  but  he  scolded ;  Emerson 
did  not  laugh,  but  in  his  gravest  moments 
there  was  a  smile  waiting  for  the  cloud  to 
pass  from  his  forehead.  The  Duet  they 
chanted  was  a  Miserere  with  a  Te  Deum  for 
its  Antiphon  ;  a  De  Profundis  answered  by  a 
Sursum  Corda.  '  The  ground  of  my  ex 
istence  is  black  as  death/  says  Carlyle. 
c  Come  and  live  with  me  a  year/  says 
Emerson,  c  and  if  you  do  not  like  New 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  179 

England  well  enough  to  stay,  one  of  these 
years  (when  the  "History "  has  passed  its 
ten  editions,  and  been  translated  into  as  many 
languages)  I  will  come  and  dwell  with  you/  ' 
The  criticisms  of  each  other's  style  are  most 
frank.  In  his  first  letter,  Emerson  remon 
strates  with  Carlyle  upon  his  "defying  dic 
tion  " ;  and  he  writes  in  his  diary,  "  O, 
Carlyle !  the  merit  of  glass  is  not  to  be 
seen,  but  to  be  seen  through."  Carlyle 
finds  that  Emerson's  sentences  do  not 
"cohere,"  do  not  "rightly  stick  to  their 
foregoers  and  their  followers ;  the  para 
graphs  not  as  a  beaten  ingot,  but  as  a 
beautiful  bag  of  duck  shot  held  together  by 
canvas."  In  his  diary  Emerson  writes: 
"  My  affection  for  that  man  really  incapa 
citates  me  from  reading  his  book.  The 
pages  which  to  others  look  so  rich  and 
alluring  to  me  have  a  frigid  and  marrowless 
air  for  the  warm  hand  and  heart  I  have  an 
estate  in,  and  the  living  eye  of  which  I  can 
almost  discern  across  the  sea  some  sparkles." 
In  1836  Emerson  edited  "Sartor  Re- 
sartus,"  from  the  pages  of  Fraser,  and  had 
it  published  in  Boston,  himself  writing  a 


180      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

preface  for  the  book.  He  had  lent  the 
numbers  of  Fraser  to  Miss  Jackson  at 
Plymouth,  and  we  have  accounts  of  the 
excitement  which  they  caused  in  her  circle 
and  in  others.  "  The  foreign  dress  and 
aspect  of  the  work,"  Emerson  said  in  his 
preface,  "are  quite  superficial,  and  cover  a 
genuine  Saxon  heart.  We  believe  no  book 
has  been  published  for  many  years  written 
in  a  more  sincere  style  of  idiomatic  English, 
or  which  discovers  an  equal  mastery  over  all 
the  riches  of  language.  The  author  makes 
ample  amends  for  the  occasional  eccentricity 
of  his  genius,  not  only  by  frequent  bursts 
of  pure  splendor,  but  by  the  wit  and  sense 
which  never  fail  him."  He  has  "  an  insight 
into  the  manifold  wants  and  tendencies  of 
human  nature,  which  is  very  rare  among  our 
popular  authors.  The  philosophy  and  the 
purity  of  moral  sentiment  which  inspire  the 
work  will  find  their  way  to  the  heart  of 
every  lover  of  virtue." 

Emerson  received  ^150  from  the  sale 
of  this  American  edition  of  "  Sartor  Re- 
sartus,"  —  a  sum  which  must  have  been  wel 
come  enough  in  Cheyne  Row,  considering 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  181 

the  rather  low  ebb  of  the  housekeeping 
there  at  the  time.  This  was  before  "  Sartor  " 
had  been  published  at  all  in  book  form  in 
England,  and  while  there  were  probably  not 
a  dozen  persons  between  Whitechapel  and 
Chelsea  who  thought  it  anything  else  than  a 
mass  of  extravagances  and  absurdities.  Car 
lyle,  having  occasion  at  this  time  to  make 
an  extract  from  "  Sartor,"  said  parentheti 
cally,  "  I  quote  from  a  New  England  book." 
The  interest  in  Carlyle  was  for  long  much 
greater  in  America  than  in  England ;  and 
not  a  few  of  Emerson's  letters  enclose  drafts 
for  copyright.  "The  French  Revolution" 
found  its  adequate  recognition  in  Boston 
long  before  it  found  it  in  London. 

In  1838  Emerson  collected  Carlyle's 
essays  and  miscellaneous  writings,  from  the 
pages  of  the  English  reviews,  and  published 
them  in  three  volumes,  with  an  introduc 
tion  ;  and  this  was  done  also  before  the 
essays  were  put  into  a  book  in  England. 
All  of  the  zealous  New  England  Tran- 
scendentalists  in  that  time  were  close  readers 
of  Carlyle ;  many  of  them  owed  to  him 
their  principal  knowledge  of  German  liter- 


1 82      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

ature;  most  of  them  were  profoundly  af 
fected  by  him.  Carlyle  loved  the  Dial — 
"  yet  with  a  kind  of  shudder."  Years  be 
fore  the  Dial  was  started,  there  had  been 
talk  of  another  journal,  with  Carlyle  as  its 
editor.  Emerson  especially  wished  that  he 
might  come  to  New  England.  "  Shall  we 
not  bid  him  come/'  he  writes  to  James 
Freeman  Clarke  in  1834,  "and  be  Poet  and 
Teacher  to  a  most  scattered  flock  wanting  a 
shepherd  ? " 

"  Past  and  Present  "  was  published  during 
the  brief  existence  of  the  Dial.  Emerson 
edited  it  for  America,  and  wrote  about  it  in 
the  Dial,  pronouncing  it  a  political  tract 
with  which  we  have  nothing  to  compare 
since  Milton  and  Burke.  "  It  is  such  an 
appeal  to  the  conscience  and  honor  of  Eng 
land  as  cannot  be  forgotten.  .  .  .  When  the 
political  aspects  are  so  calamitous  that  the 
sympathies  of  the  man  overpower  the  habits 
of  the  poet,  a  higher  than  literary  inspiration 
may  succor  him.  It  is  a  costly  proof  of 
character,  that  the  most  renowned  scholar  of 
England  should  take  his  reputation  in  his 
hand  and  should  descend  into  the  ring ;  and 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          183 

he  has  added  to  his  love  whatever  honor  his 
opinions  may  forfeit.  To  atone  for  this 
departure  from  the  vows  of  the  scholar  and 
his  eternal  duties,  to  this  secular  charity,  we 
have  at  least  this  gain,  that  here  is  a  message 
which  those  to  whom  it  was  addressed  can 
not  choose  but  hear."  Emerson  declares 
Carlyle  to  be  "  the  first  domestication  of  the 
modern  system  with  its  infinity  of  details 
into  style," — all  the  vast  and  multifarious 
movements  of  our  present  civilization  best 
represented  in  him.  For  "  London  and 
Europe  tunnelled,  graded,  corn-lawed,  with 
trade-nobility,  and  East  and  West  Indies  for 
dependencies,  and  America  with  the  Rocky 
Hills  in  the  horizon,  have  never  before  been 
conquered  in  literature."  Of  the  faults  of 
the  book  Emerson  says:  "It  appears  to  us 
as  a  certain  disproportion  in  the  picture, 
caused  by  the  obtrusion  of  the  whims  of  the 
painter.  In  this  work,  as  in  his  former 
labors,  Mr.  Carlyle  reminds  us  of  a  sick 
giant.  His  humors  are  expressed  with  so 
much  force  of  constitution  that  his  fancies 
are  more  attractive  and  more  credible  than 
the  sanity  of  duller  men.  But  the  habitual 


184     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

exaggeration  of  the  tone  wearies  while  it 
stimulates.  It  is  felt  to  be  so  much  deduc 
tion  from  the  universality  of  the  picture. 
It  is  not  serene  sunshine,  but  everything 
is  seen  in  lurid  storm-lights.  Every  object 
attitudinizes  to  the  very  mountains,  and  stars 
almost,  under  the  refractions  of  this  wonder 
ful  humorist;  and,  instead  of  the  common 
earth  and  sky,  we  have  a  Martin's  Creation 
or  Judgment  Day." 

The  editing  of  "  Sartor  Resartus "  and 
Carlyle's  Essays  may  be  regarded  as  the 
beginning  of  Emerson's  own  literary  career. 
He  doubtless  looked  upon  the  introduction 
of  Carlyle  to  America  as  the  best  thing  that 
a  literary  man  could  do  at  that  time.  "  If 
the  good  Heaven  have  any  word  to  impart 
to  this  unworthy  generation,"  he  wrote, 
"  here  is  one  scribe  qualified  and  clothed  for 
its  occasion."  Emerson  published  nothing 
himself  during  his  days  in  the  ministry,  and 
seems  to  have  written  nothing  on  literary 
themes.  "Nature"  did  not  appear  till 
1836 ;  and  it  was  not  until  after  the  publica 
tion  of  u  Sartor "  that  the  oration  on  the 
"  American  Scholar  "  came  and  the  epoch- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  185 

making  address  to  the  Harvard  Divinity 
School, —  the  first  clear  revelations  to  Bos 
ton  and  Cambridge  of  the  nature  of  the 
new  light  which  was  rising.  The  Harvard 
address  was  written  at  the  very  time  that  he 
was  editing  Carlyle's  Essays,  and  we  may 
imagine  that  he  refreshed  himself  in  the 
writing  by  spells  of  recourse  to  <c  Signs  of 
the  Times  "  and  cc  Characteristics." 

Emerson's  oration  on  the  "American 
Scholar"  filled  Carlyle  with  delight,  as  he 
had  already  been  delighted  with  "  Nature," 
which  he  had  lent  about  to  all  his  acquaint 
ance  that  "  had  a  sense  for  such  things." 
He  justly  anticipated  the  verdict  of  the  years 
when  he  wrote  to  Emerson,  "  I  call  it  The 
Foundation  and  Ground-plan  on  which  you 
may  build  whatsoever  of  great  and  true  has 
been  given  you  to  build." 

We  now  find  Carlyle,  on  his  side,  intro 
ducing  Emerson  to  England.  Emerson's 
first  little  volume  of  Essays  was  published 
in  1841  ;  and  the  same  year  Carlyle  had 
it  reprinted  in  England,  with  a  preface  by 
himself, —  a  preface  so  memorable,  so  char 
acteristic  of  Carlyle,  so  justly  appreciative 


1 86      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  Emerson  and  so  unfamiliar,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  to  most  American  readers  to-day, 
that  a  few  passages  from  it  may  profitably 
be  cited  here  :  * — 

"The  name  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
is  not  entirely  new  to  England ;  distin 
guished  travellers  bring  us  tidings  of  such  a 
man ;  fractions  of  his  writings  have  found 
their  way  into  the  hands  of  the  curious  here  ; 
fitful  hints  that  there  is  in  New  England 
some  spiritual  notability  called  Emerson 
glide  through  reviews  and  magazines.  .  .  . 
Emerson's  writings  and  speakings  amount 
to  something ;  and  yet  hitherto,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  this  Emerson  is  far  less  notable  for 
what  he  has  spoken  or  done  than  for  the 
many  things  he  has  not  spoken  and  has  for 
borne  to  do.  With  uncommon  interest  I 
have  learned  that  this,  and  in  such  a  never- 
resting,  locomotive  country  too,  is  one  of 
those  rare  men  who  have  withal  the  invalu 
able  talent  of  sitting  still.  That  an  educated 
man  of  good  gifts  and  opportunities,  after 
looking  at  the  public  arena  and  even  trying 

*  The  whole  is  given  in  Mr.  George  Willis  Cooke's  volume  on 
Emerson,  that  invaluable  repository  of  so  much  about  Emerson  not 
otherwise  easily  accessible. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  187 

—  not  with  ill  success  —  what  its  tasks  and 
its  prizes  might  amount  to,  should  retire  for 
long  years  into  rustic  obscurity  and,  amid 
the  all-pervading  jingle  of  dollars  and  loud 
chaffering  of  ambitions  and  promotions, 
should  quietly,  with  cheerful  deliberateness, 
sit  down  to  spend  his  life,  not  in  Mammon- 
worship  or  the  hunt  for  reputation,  influ 
ence,  place  or  any  outward  advantage  what 
soever  ;  this,  when  we  get  note  of  it,  is  a 
thing  really  worth  noting.  For  myself,  I 
have  looked  over  with  no  common  feeling 
to  this  brave  Emerson,  seated  by  his  rustic 
hearth  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean  (yet 
not  altogether  parted  from  me  either),  silently 
communing  with  his  own  soul  and  with  the 
God's  World  it  finds  itself  alive  in  yonder. 
Pleasures  of  Virtue,  Progress  of  the  Species, 
Black  Emancipation,  New  Tariff,  Eclecti 
cism,  Locofocoism,  Ghost  of  Improved 
Socinianism,  these,  with  many  other  ghosts 
and  substances,  are  squeaking,  jabbering, 
according  to  their  capabilities,  round  this 
man.  To  one  man  among  the  sixteen 
millions  their  jabber  is  all  unmusical.  The 
silent  voices  of  the  stars  above  and  of  the 


1 88      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

green  earth  beneath  are  profitable  to  him, — 
tell  him  gradually  that  these  others  are  but 
ghosts,  which  will  shortly  have  to  vanish ; 
that  the  Life-Fountain  these  proceed  out 
of  does  not  vanish.  The  words  of  such 
a  man  —  what  words  he  finds  good  to  speak 
—  are  worth  attending  to/* 

This  from  Carlyle,  who  at  the  same  time 
was  writing  to  Sterling,  "  Emerson  seems 
to  me  like  a  kind  of  New  Era,"  while  most 
proper  New  England  people  looked  upon 
Emerson  as  little  less  beside  himself  than 
the  Londoners  had  thought  the  author  of 
"  Sartor  Resartus,"  *  and  while  the  greater 
part  of  the  five  hundred  copies  of"  Nature," 
which  were  all  that  the  bookseller  ventured 
to  print,  still  lay  on  the  bookseller's  shelves, 
destined  to  be  well  represented  there  for  ten 
years  to  come.  The  critics  found  the  "  Es 
says  "  more  devoid  of  real  meaning  than 
anything  which  often  came  into  their  hands. 
One,  of  Princeton,  thought  that  such  essays 

*  "  The  majority  of  the  sensible,  practical  community  regarded 
him  as  mystical,  as  crazy  or  affected,  as  an  imitator  of  Carlyle,  as  racked 
and  revolutionary,  as  a  fool,  as  one  who  did  not  himself  know  what  he 
meant." — Jamts  Freeman  Clarke,  Lecture  on  the  Religious  Philosophy 
of  Emerson. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  189 

could  be  produced  during  a  lifetime,  as  rap 
idly  as  a  human  pen  could  be  made  to  move. 
Harvard  College,  at  the  hands  of  one  pro 
fessor,  found  the  Essays  full  of  cc  extrava 
gance,  overweening  self-confidence,  ancient 
errors,  and  misty  rhetoric,"  and  at  the  hands 
of  another  found  his  "  professed  poetry  "  the 
"  most  prosaic  and  unintelligible  stuff." 
Sound  Unitarianism  hastened  to  repudiate 
the  address  before  the  Divinity  School  as 
the  "  lucubrations  of  an  individual  who  had 
no  connection  with  the  school  whatever," 
and  notions  "utterly  distasteful  to  Unitarian 
ministers  generally,  by  whom  they  were 
esteemed  neither  good  divinity  nor  good 
sense."  Only  Dr.  Channing  told  Mr.  Ware 
and  Mr.  Norton  that  they  were  fighting 
shadows,  and  that  Emerson's  God  was 
"alive  and  not  dead" ;  and  Theodore 
Parker,  whose  true  life  was  now  beginning, 
said  that  it  was  Emerson  who  fed  his  lamp. 
It  was  not  Carlyle  alone  who  measured  the 
new  man  aright,  nor  in  Old  England  only 
that  the  prophet  was  received.  But,  steadily 
as  Emerson's  reputation  grew  at  home,  it 
grew  even  more  rapidly  in  England, — just 


190     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

as  the  recognition  of  Carlyle  was  quicker 
here  than  there.  As  to  Carlyle's  intellectual 
influence  upon  Emerson  himself,  an  English 
critic  has  justly  said,  "  It  would  be  hard  to 
lay  the  finger  on  a  passage  in  Emerson 
which  he  could  not  conceivably  have  come 
by  if  Carlyle  had  never  lived."  Yet  another 
English  scholar  has  said  equally  justly, 
"  Carlyle's  frank  recognition  of  him  as  a 
spiritual  and  intellectual  equal  must  have 
had  a  most  stimulating  effect  on  him." 
It  was  very  largely  owing  to  Carlyle's  intro 
duction  and  hearty  indorsement  that  Emer 
son's  Essays  were  at  once  so  widely  read 
in  England  and  that  his  fame  as  a  lecturer 
became  so  great  as  to  lead  to  the  invitation 
from  the  Mechanics'  Institutes  for  the 
courses  of  lectures  in  England.  He  went 
to  England  in  October,  1847,  simply  writ 
ing  to  Carlyle  that  he  intended  to  sail 
"about  the  first  of  October."  "Contrive 
in  some  sure  way,"  wrote  Carlyle  to  Mr. 
Ireland  in  Manchester,  "  that  Emerson  may 
get  hold  of  my  note  the  instant  he  lands  in 
England.  I  shall  be  permanently  grieved 
otherwise.  And,  on  the  whole,  if  you  can, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  191 

get  him  put  safe  into  the  express  train,  and 
shot  up  hither,  as  the  first  road  he  goes.'* 
This  invitation,  Emerson  wrote  his  wife, 
"  I  could  no  more  resist  than  I  could  gravi 
tation";  and  he  hastened  to  London.  "At 
ten  at  night  the  door  was  opened  to  me  by 
Jane  Carlyle,  and  the  man  himself  was 
behind  her  with  a  lamp  in  the  entry.  They 
were  very  little  changed  from  their  old 
selves  of  fourteen  years  ago,  when  I  left 
them  at  Craigenputtock.  f  Well/  said  Car 
lyle,  c  here  we  are,  shovelled  together  again/ 
The  floodgates  of  his  talk  are  quickly 
opened,  and  the  river  is  a  great  and  constant 
stream.  We  had  large  communication  that 
night  until  nearly  one  o'clock,  and  at  break 
fast  next  morning  it  began  again."  Then 
came  many  great  walks  about  London, 
"  Carlyle  melting  all  Westminster  and  Lon 
don  down  with  his  talk  and  laughter  as 
he  walked ; "  and,  mixed  with  the  many 
lectures  and  the  much  society,  happy 
evenings  and  mornings  by  the  fireside. 
"  Carlyle  and  his  wife  live  on  beautiful  terms. 
Nothing  can  be  more  engaging  than  their 
ways,  and  in  her  bookcase  all  his  books  are 


192      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

inscribed  to  her,  as  they  come,  from  year  to 
year,  each  with  some  significant  lines." 

Yet,  as  the  weeks  of  Emerson's  English 
lecturing  went  on,  it  is  clear  that  the  sharp 
differences  in  temperament  and  in  opinion 
between  the  two  men  made  themselves 
seriously  felt.  Carlyle  writes  to  a  friend 
early  in  Emerson's  visit :  "  We  had  immense 
talking  with  him  here,  but  found  he  did  not 
give  us  much  to  chew  the  cud  upon, — found, 
in  fact,  that  he  came  with  the  rake  rather 
than  the  shovel.  He  is  a  pure,  high-minded 
man ;  but  I  think  his  talent  is  not  quite 
so  high  as  I  had  anticipated."  He  found 
Emerson's  doctrines  "  too  airy  and  thin." 
A  little  later  he  writes  in  his  diary  concern 
ing  Emerson:  "Very  exotic  —  differed  much 
from  me,  as  a  gymnosophist  sitting  idle  on 
a  flowery  bank  may  do  from  a  wearied 
worker  and  wrestler  passing  that  way  with 
many  of  his  bones  broken."  When  finally 
Emerson  returned  home,  Carlyle,  recording 
the  fact  that  he  "  parted  with  him  in  peace," 
and  paying  another  tender  tribute  to  him  for 
his  great  friendliness  to  himself,  comments  : 
"  A  spiritual  son  of  mine  ?  Yes,  in  a  good 


I'.inn  ,<m    and    Carlylc  i ()  ,\ 


ecree,  >u(  j'one  i n( o  pianl  ropy  ;iiui  ol her 
moonshine."  "Carlylc,  a  I  (Ins  lime,''  as 
Cahof  say;,  ct  was  in  a  mood  in  winch  I'.mei 
son's  o|)(  inii',11)  was  api  locall  loifh  'showers 
ol  vitriol'  upon  all  mm  and  llnnj's.  'I  hey 
did  not  mccl  often  nor  wilh  nni<  h  pleasure 
on  cilhersidc;  Imf  their  rei/ard  and  alleedon 
lor  cadi  oilier  were  unahalcd."  I'.arher  in 
his  biography  ol  I'.inerson,  speaking  |»«-i)f-r 
ally  ol  the  fwo  men's  charaelei  islies,  in  Ins 
aceounl  ol  the  hrj'inmn^  ol  their  Inend 
ship,  ('ahol  says,  not  with  enlne  fiulh,  hut 
cmphasi/ing  the  point  which  now  alleeled 
them:  u  Neil  hei  c  at  rd  nun  h  for  I  he  ol  hrr's 
ideas;  lo  each,  indeed,  (he  leading  idea  ol 
the  oilier,  fhe  message  he  wishc-d  lo  hear  lo 
Ins  j'cnri  at  ion,  was  a  delusion.  Mad  they 
hcen  recjuired  respectively  lo  define  l>y  a 
sinide  frail  the  farlhesl  reach  ol  lolly  in 
a  theory  ol  conduct,  (  arlyle  would  have 
selected  the-  notion  thai  mankind  need  only 
lo  l>c  sel  Irce  and  led  lo  thuds,  and  act 
for  themselves,  and  I'.merson  the  doc  irme 
that  they  need  only  lo  he  well  governed." 
These  dillerc-Mces  were  accentuated  to  llie 

highest  degree  at  the  time  of    Emerton'f 


194      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

visit  to  London  in  1847.  Carlyle  was  sur 
charged  with  Cromwell ;  Emerson  was  hos 
pitably  entertaining  the  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance  in  its  extremest  form,  and  even 
venturing  opinions  which,  fathered  to-day 
by  Kropotkin  and  his  friends,  would  be 
called  rank  anarchy.  Espinasse,  summing 
up  the  talk  at  Carlyle's,  declares  that  "  Em 
erson's  theory  was  that  the  wise  man  should 
have  such  perfect  confidence  in  the  on-goings 
of  the  universe,  the  development  of  the 
human  race  included,  as  to  refrain  from 
fighting  with  pen  or  tongue,  not  less  than 
with  sword,  for  the  good  and  against  the 
bad,  and  should  regard  even  the  best  gov 
ernment  and  legislation  as  superfluous  inter 
ferences  with  the  ordained  economy  of 
things."  It  was  of  this  visit  to  England, 
it  will  be  remembered,  that  "  English  Traits  " 
was  born.  The  chapter  on  Stonehenge  is 
an  account  of  Emerson's  visit  to  the  fa 
mous  ruin  in  company  with  Carlyle,  and  con 
tains  the  record  of  significant  conversation  ; 
but,  although  Emerson  tells  us  here  that  he 
"  opened  the  dogma  of  no-government  and 
non-resistance "  and  said  sweeping  things 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  195 

about  "  the  bankruptcy  of  the  vulgar  mus 
ket-worship,"  it  is  clear  that  the  record  is 
incomplete.  Espinasse  tells  us  that  after 
this  trip  to  Stonehenge  Carlyle  was  full 
of  indignant  protest  at  Emerson's  limitless 
laissez-faire-)  which,  he  said,  would  prevent 
a  man  from  "  rooting  out  a  thistle."  Caro 
line  Fox  says  that  Carlyle  tried  to  shake 
Emerson's  optimism  by  taking  him  the 
round  of  the  horrors  and  abominations  of 
London,  asking  after  each  exhibition,  cc  Do 
you  believe  in  the  devil  now  ? "  When 
Emerson  at  the  Cheyne  Row  fireside  em 
phasized  his  belief  that  man  everywhere,  in 
whatever  sin  or  degradation,  was  always 
tending  upwards,  Mrs.  Carlyle's  indignation, 
Espinasse  tells  us,  <c  knew  no  bounds,  and 
for  some  time  she  could  scarcely  speak  of 
Emerson  with  patience."  Espinasse  would 
make  us  believe  that  the  friction  with  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  rather  serious,  saying,  cc  Emer 
son's  admiration  for  her  abated  visibly,  till 
at  last  he  was  heard  to  say  that  the  society 
of  c  the  lady  '  was  worth  cultivating  mainly 
because  she  was  the  person  who  could  tell 
you  most  about  the  husband."  All  these 


196      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

things  are  to  be  taken  for  what  they  are 
worth ;  and  they  are  not  worth  very  much. 
They  witness  to  the  great  personal  and 
philosophical  differences  between  Emerson 
and  Carlyle ;  but  their  mutual  admiration 
and  affection  went  on  after  the  conversa 
tions  just  the  same  as  before  them.  In 
the  Stonehenge  chapter  itself,  Emerson 
pays  special  tribute  to  Carlyle's  genius,  pen 
etration,  and  severe  theory  of  duty ;  and 
Carlyle  writes  to  Emerson  soon  after  his 
return  to  America,  "  Though  I  see  well 
enough  what  a  great  deep  cleft  divides  us, 
in  our  ways  of  practically  looking  at  the 
world,  I  see  also  (as  probably  you  do  your 
self)  where  are  the  rock-strata,  miles  deep, 
united  again,  and  the  two  poor  souls  are 
at  one." 

The  Life  of  Cromwell  had  been  pub 
lished  shortly  before  this  time  of  Emerson's 
lecturing  in  England,  and  Carlyle  was  now 
beginning  his  preparations  for  the  intermin 
able  "  Frederick."  Now  and  then,  as  this 
work  went  on,  a  letter  came  from  Emerson  ; 
"  and,  amid  all  the  smoke  and  mist  of  this 
world,"  said  Carlyle,  "  it  is  always  as  a 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  197 

window  flung  open  to  the  azure.  During 
all  this  last  weary  work  of  mine,  his 
words  have  been  nearly  the  only  ones 
about  the  thing  done  to  which  I  have  in 
wardly  responded."  It  was  a  weary  work 
indeed  for  Carlyle ;  and,  when  at  last  it  was 
completed,  he  wrote  to  Emerson  to  express 
the  sorrowful  conviction  that  the  years  spent 
on  it  had  been  wasted,  as  the  more  he  had 
to  do  with  Frederick  the  less  heroic  he 
found  him.  This  may  have  been  extrava 
gant, —  it  was  the  expression  of  an  exhausted 
and  despondent  time ;  but  certain  it  is  that 
the  effect  of  his  long  years  upon  the  "  Fred 
erick  "  was  not  wholesome  for  Carlyle ;  and 
perhaps  it  was  this  absorption  in  Prussian 
absolutism  as  much  as  anything  else  which 
betrayed  him  into  the  positions  which  he 
took  at  the  beginning  of  our  Civil  War,  and 
which  he  defended  with  a  coarseness  so 
brutal, —  for  it  must  be  said, —  which  Amer 
icans  found  it  so  hard  to  forgive.  The 
bitter  feelings  against  him  which  came  to 
his  ears  from  America  were  very  painful  to 
Carlyle.  "  They  think,"  he  cried  sharply 
to  an  American  friend,  "  some  of  you  think, 


198      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

I  am  no  friend  to  America.  But  I  love 
America,  the  true  America,  the  country  of 
Emerson  and  Emerson's  friends,  the  country 
of  honest  toilers  and  brave  thinkers. "  It 
was  Emerson  who  dealt  the  final,  stagger 
ing  blow  which  awakened  Carlyle  from  his 
false  dream  of  the  conditions  of  society  in 
the  Southern  States ;  for,  though  he  awak 
ened  slowly,  he  did  awake  at  last.  "It  was 
early  in  October,  1864,"  says  Mr.  Conway, 
"  that  I  found  him  reading  and  rereading  a 
letter  from  Emerson."  The  "  voice  from 
Concord  "  had  come  to  him  now  freighted 
with  tenderness  indeed,  but  also  with  terrible 
truth.  The  letter  spoke  of  old  friendship, 
mentioned  pleasantly  a  friend  whom  Carlyle 
had  introduced,  and  spoke  of  the  satisfaction 
with  which  he  had  read  the  fourth  volume 
of  the  "  Frederick,"  especially  the  evidence 
it  gave  that  many  years  had  not  yet  broken 
any  fibre  of  Carlyle's  force, — "  a  pure  joy  to 
me,  who  abhor  the  inroads  which  time  makes 
in  me  and  my  friends.  To  live  too  long 
is  the  capital  misfortune."  Then,  says  Mr. 
Conway,  Emerson's  sentences  turned  to 
fire, —  fire  in  which  love  was  quick  as  enthu- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  199 

siasm  was  burning.  He  said  he  had  lately 
lamented  that  Carlyle  had  not  visited 
America.  It  would  have  made  it  impossible 
that  his  name  should  ever  be  cited  against 
the  side  of  humanity,  and  would  have  shown 
him  the  necessities  and  aspirations  struggling 
up  in  the  free  states,  though  but  unsteadily 
articulated  there.  "  The  battle  of  humanity 
is  at  this  hour  in  America."  He  longed  to 
enlist  him  with  his  thunderbolt  on  the  right 
side.  Could  not  the  thoughtful  minds  of 
England  see  the  finger-pointings  of  the  gods 
which,  above  the  understanding,  feed  the 
hopes  and  guide  the  wills  of  men  ?  As  for 
Carlyle  himself,  there  must  be  some  mistake. 
Perhaps  he  was  experimenting  on  idlers. 
But  he  could  not  be  disguised  from  those 
eyes  that  saw  deep.  They  knew  him  better 
than  he  knew  himself,  perhaps,  certainly 
better  than  others  knew  him.  And  so 
Carlyle  felt  when  he  read  in  this  letter,  at 
the  close,  "  Keep  the  old  kindness,  which  I 
prize  above  words." 

"  No  danger  but  that  will  be  kept,"  said 
Carlyle.  "  For  the  rest,  this  letter,  the  first 
I  have  received  from  Emerson  this  long 


200     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

time,  fills  me  with  astonishment.  That  the 
clearest  mind  now  living  —  for  I  don't 
know  Emerson's  equal  on  earth  for  percep 
tion —  should  write  so  is  quasi-miraculous. 
I  have  tried  to  look  into  the  middle  of 
things  in  America,  and  I  have  seen  a  people 
cutting  throats  indefinitely  to  put  the  negro 
into  a  position  for  which  all  experience 
shows  him  unfit." 

Emerson's  letter  now  came  as  the  voice 
of  Carlyle's  good  angel.  "  Never  again," 
says  Mr.  Conway,  "  did  I  hear  Carlyle 
speak  as  before  concerning  the  issue  in 
America."  His  esteem  for  America  and 
Americans  steadily  grew,  and  his  eyes 
seemed  again  turning  with  hope  to  the 
West. 

In  the  Concord  household  the  affection 
for  Carlyle  and  the  pre-eminent  interest  in 
him  had  never  wavered.  We  get  many 
glimpses  of  them.  One  interesting  glimpse 
is  that,  in  one  of  the  years  soon  after 
Emerson's  London  lecturing,  which  John 
Albee  gives  us.  The  talk  had  turned  to 
Carlyle,  and  Emerson  produced  Carlyle's 
photograph,  with  the  heavy  lower  jaw  and 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  201 

lip,  "  between  which  as  between  millstones," 
he  said  with  loving  admiration,  "  every 
humbug  was  sure  to  be  pulverized."  "  And 
then,"  says  Albee,  "  he  good-naturedly  imi 
tated  Carlyle  for  me ;  he  was  an  excellent 
mimic."  Soon  after  the  war  Carlyle  con 
ceived  the  thought  of  presenting  to  New 
England  the  books  which  he  had  collected 
and  used  in  the  preparation  of  his  "  Crom 
well  "  and  "Frederick  the  Great,"  — "of 
testifying,"  he  wrote,  "  my  gratitude  to  New 
England  —  New  England  acting  mainly 
through  one  of  her  sons  called  Waldo 
Emerson."  There  was  correspondence  be 
tween  the  two,  the  relative  claims  of  the 
Boston  Public  Library  and  the  Harvard 
Library  were  considered,  and  finally  it  was 
settled  by  Emerson's  judgment  that  all 
should  go  together  to  Harvard,  where  to-day 
they  constitute  one  of  the  university's  sa 
cred  treasures.  Emerson  wrote  that  he 
should  add  the  copy  of  Wood's  "  Athenae 
Oxonienses,"  given  him  by  Carlyle  in  1848, 
"in  which  every  pen  and  pencil  mark  of 
yours  is  notable," —  as  may  also  be  said  con 
cerning  the  Cromwell  books. 


2O2      The   Influence  of  Emerson 

Niagara  had  been  safely  shot  by  us, 
"nigger  question"  and  all,  the  prodigal 
Southern  States  had  been  taken  home 
again,  and  the  Geneva  tribunal  had  duly 
assessed  John  Bull  for  his  bad  manners, 
when  Emerson,  in  October,  1872,  set  out 
for  his  last  visit  to  Europe.  In  London  he 
found  new  delight  in  his  friendship  for 
Carlyle.  "  I  found  my  way  to  Chelsea,"  he 
writes  his  wife,  "  and  spent  two  or  three 
hours  with  Carlyle  in  his  study.  He 
opened  his  arms  and  embraced  me,  after 
seriously  gazing  for  a  time :  c  I  am  glad  to 
see  you  once  more  in  the  flesh/  —  and  we  sat 
down  and  had  a  steady  outpouring  for  two 
hours  and  more."  Carlyle  wrote  concern 
ing  it,  cc  It's  a  very  striking  and  curious 
spectacle  to  behold  a  man  in  these  days 
so  confidently  cheerful  as  Emerson."  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  now  dead,  and  Carlyle  had  en 
tered  into  the  evening  twilight, —  "  so  aged- 
looking,"  Emerson  found ;  but  Emerson's 
visit  was  made  a  festival  by  his  old  English 
friends.  "  There  is  no  other  American," 
wrote  one,  "who  has  in  England  a  company 
of  such  friends  as  those  who  gather  about 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  203 

Mr.  Emerson  ;  no  one  for  whom  so  many 
rare  men  and  women  have  a  reverence  so 
affectionate ;  no  one  who  holds  to  the  best 
section  of  English  students  and  of  her  most 
religious  and  cultivated  minds  a  relation 
so  delightful  to  both."  This  interest  was 
shown  in  the  organization  in  England,  in 
1869,  of  an  association,  which  Emerson 
found  in  full  life  on  this  last  visit,  devoted 
to  the  publication  and  diffusion  of  the  works 
of  Carlyle  and  Emerson, —  its  kindred  ob 
jects,  the  diffusion  of  education,  the  ele 
vation  of  woman,  international  peace,  the 
broadening  of  religion,  and  the  general 
diffusion  of  art  and  culture. 

Emerson  returned  to  America  in  1873. 
It  was  just  forty  years  from  the  time  when, 
a  young  man  of  thirty,  he  had  first  found 
Carlyle  on  the  Craigenputtock  moors.  Mill, 
who  had  introduced  him  to  Carlyle,  died  in 
the  same  month  (May,  1873)  tnat  Emerson 
now  left  Carlyle  for  the  last  time.  Cole 
ridge,  Wordsworth,  Landor,  Clough,  Leigh 
Hunt,  Dickens,  Faraday,  Thackeray,  Ma- 
caulay,  Arnold,  Mrs.  Somerville,  and  others, 
whom  he  had  met  during  his  previous  visits 


204     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

to  England,  were  dead.  Channing  and 
Parker,  Margaret  Fuller  and  Francis,  among 
the  old  Transcendentalists  and  reformers, 
were  dead.  Sumner  and  Garrison,  Ripley 
and  Brownson,  Dwight  and  Cranch,  Cabot, 
W.  H.  Channing,  Hedge,  Bartol,  Clarke, 
Furness,  and  Miss  Peabody  still  lived,  al 
though  so  many  of  them  were  destined  to 
precede  Emerson  to  the  undiscovered  coun 
try.  Hawthorne  and  Thoreau  were  dead. 
Alcott  alone  remained  his  neighbor,  out  of 
the  once  bright  Concord  constellation.  Car- 
lyle  was  now  almost  eighty,  and  his  working 
life  was  done.  Emerson's  work  too  was  al 
most  over.  In  1874  he  was  put  in  nomina- 
nation  by  the  independent  party  among  the 
students  of  Glasgow  University  for  the  office 
of  Lord  Rector,  and  received  five  hundred 
votes  against  seven  hundred  for  Disraeli,  who 
was  elected.  "  I  count  that  vote,"  Emerson 
wrote  to  Dr.  Hutchison  Stirling,  "  as  quite 
the  fairest  laurel  that  has  ever  fallen  on 
me;"  as  Carlyle  counted  his  own  election 
by  the  students  of  Edinburgh  the  highest 
honor  ever  paid  himself. 

In    1874    Emerson    published    "  Parnas- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  205 

sus";  in  1875  ne  spoke  at  the  centennial 
of  the  Concord  fight,  upon  the  very  spot 
where  the  militia 

"  Fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world  " ; 

in  1875  also  he  published  "  Letters  and 
Social  Aims";  in  1879  he  read  a  paper  be 
fore  the  Harvard  Divinity  School  on  "The 
Preacher/'  the  last  expression  of  his  relig 
ious  views,  and  fit  complement  to  the  fa 
mous  address  of  forty  years  before.  In  this 
year,  and  again  in  1880,  he  read  papers  be 
fore  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  in 
which,  as  the  offspring  of  the  old  Transcen 
dentalism,  he  was  so  deeply  interested ;  and 
in  1880  he  gave  his  hundredth  lecture  be 
fore  the  Concord  Lyceum,  on  "  New  Eng 
land  Life  and  Letters."  His  last  public 
acts  were  the  reading  of  his  tribute  to  Car 
lyle,  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  Feb.  10,  1881,  and  his  lecture  on 
"Aristocracy,"  at  the  Concord  School  of 
Philosophy,  in  July  of  the  same  year.  The 
last  time  he  left  his  house  was  to  hear  an 
essay  by  Dr.  Harris  of  the  Concord  School, 
and  then  his  neighbor,  on  Carlyle's  "  Sartor 


206      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Resartus."  He  died  April  27,  1882.  Of 
his  final  illness,  the  days  just  before  his 
death,  his  son  writes :  "  Though  dulled  to 
other  impressions,  to  one  he  was  fresh  as 
long  as  he  could  understand  anything,  and, 
while  even  the  familiar  objects  of  his  study 
began  to  look  strange,  he  smiled  and  pointed 
to  Carlyle's  head  and  said,  c  That  is  my 
man,  my  good  man !  '  I  mention  this  be 
cause  it  has  been  said  that  this  friendship 
cooled,  and  that  my  father  had  for  long 
years  neglected  to  write  to  his  early  friend. 
He  was  loyal  while  life  lasted,  but  had  been 
unable  to  write  a  letter  for  years  before  he 
died.  Their  friendship  did  not  need  let 
ters."  It  is  a  noteworthy  thing  that  in  his 
last  letter  to  Carlyle,  little  divining  that  it 
was  the  last,  Emerson  should  have  cast  a 
glance  back  over  the  long  years  of  their 
friendship  and  penned  this  general  judg 
ment  :  "  I  count  it  my  eminent  happiness 
to  have  been  so  nearly  your  contemporary, 
and  your  friend, —  permitted  to  detect  by  its 
rare  light  the  new  star  almost  before  the 
Easterners  had  seen  it,  and  to  have  found 
no  disappointment,  but  joyful  confirmation 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          207 

rather,  in  coming  close  to  its  orb."  That 
was  Emerson's  final  verdict,  and  it  will 
stand.  And  Carlyle  a  little  later  wrote  of 
"  the  silent  but  sacred  covenant  that  exists 
between  us  two  to  the  end." 

Much  as  there  was  in  common  in  the 
aims  and  character  and  doctrine  of  Carlyle 
and  Emerson,  there  was  something,  too,  in 
common  in  the  externalities  of  their  lives, 
and  much  in  the  courses  of  their  culture. 
Carlyle  was  almost  a  decade  the  older,  born 
in  the  year  of  the  "  whiff  of  grape-shot," 
and  just  as  "Wilhelm  Meister"  had  been 
given  to  the  world  ;  while  Emerson's  birth 
was  just  before  the  death  of  Kant  and  the 
crowning  of  Napoleon  as  emperor.  Carlyle 
came  of  the  old  Covenanting  stock  ;  Emerson 
was  preceded  by  eight  generations  of  Puritan 
ministers.  Both  were  sent  to  the  university, 
both  destined,  like  Lessing,  Kant,  and 
Fichte,  and  so  many  of  the  great  Germans 
whom  they  loved,  for  the  ministry.  Carlyle 
preached  at  least  one  sermon, — "  a  weak, 
flowery,  sentimental  piece,"  he  calls  it,  on 
the  text,  "  Before  I  was  afflicted,  I  went 
astray  " ;  but  he  did  not  enter  the  ministry, 


208      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

for  the  same  reason  that  Emerson  so  soon 
abandoned  it, —  because  he  "  found  he  did 
not  believe  the  doctrines  of  his  father's 
kirk."  Emerson,  the  son  of  the  minister  of 
the  First  Church  of  Boston,  became  himself 
the  minister  of  the  Second  Church  ;  but  the 
ministry  was  for  three  or  four  years  only, 
ending  with  his  differences  with  his  congre 
gation  about  the  Lord's  Supper,  although 
he  preached  occasionally  afterwards  for  sev 
eral  years.  The  strongest  praise  I  have 
ever  read  of  Carlyle  as  a  possible  preacher 
was  that  he  might  have  become  a  second 
Chalmers.  Alexander  Ireland,  who  heard 
Emerson  in  the  Unitarian  chapel  in  Edin 
burgh  in  1833,  says,  "Not  long  before  this 
I  had  listened  to  a  wonderful  sermon  by  Dr. 
Chalmers  ;  .  .  .  but  I  must  confess  that  the 
pregnant  thoughts  and  serene  self-possession 
of  the  young  Boston  minister  had  a  greater 
charm  for  me  than  all  the  rhetorical  splendors 
of  Chalmers." 

Both  men,  on  leaving  college,  played  the 
schoolmaster  for  a  time ;  and  both,  when 
their  pedagogical  and  theological  chapters 
were  ended,  embarked  alike  upon  the  in- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          209 

dependent  literary  career,  and  never  assumed 
any  official  or  professional  position.  Carlyle 
passed  nearly  all  his  working  life  in  his  li 
brary.  Emerson  transferred  his  ministry 
from  the  church  to  the  platform,  and  re 
mained  a  public  man.  It  was  his  choice  ;  it 
was  his  joy.  He  craved  public  influence  and 
relationship  to  men.  Of  a  certain  promising 
young  literary  man  he  said,  "  I  doubted  his 
genius  when  I  saw  that  he  did  not  seek  a  hear 
ing."  It  was  on  the  lecture  platform,  above 
all  other  places,  that  Emerson  was  at  home. 
"  My  pulpit  is  the  lyceum  platform,"  he  said. 
He  was  par  excellence  Emerson  the  Lecturer  : 
he  may  almost  be  said  to  have  founded  the 
Lyceum  in  this  country ;  and,  as  has  been 
remarked  by  another,  he  certainly  gave  it  its 
form  and  character  and  made  it  the  effi 
cient  instrument  of  instruction  and  reform 
which  it  was  for  the  third  of  a  century  and 
more  during  which  he  occupied  the  platform. 
He  was  during  this  time,  as  Mr.  Lowell  has 
said,  the  most  steadily  attractive  lecturer  in 
America,  always  drawing,  the  charm  of  his 
voice,  his  manner,  and  his  matter  continually 
winning  new  multitudes,  while  never  losing 


2io     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

its  power  over  his  earlier  hearers.  "  The 
announcement  that  such  a  pleasure  as  a  new 
course  of  lectures  by  him  is  coming,"  wrote 
Mr.  Lowell,  "  to  people  as  old  as  I  am,  is 
something  like  those  forebodings  of  spring 
that  prepare  us  every  year  for  a  familiar 
novelty,  none  the  less  novel,  when  it  arrives, 
because  it  is  familiar."  Almost  everything 
that  Emerson  wrote  after  the  essay  on  "Nat 
ure  "  was  written  originally  for  the  platform. 
"  Representative  Men,"  "  English  Traits," 
"  The  Conduct  of  Life,"  "  Letters  and  Social 
Aims,"  "  Society  and  Solitude," —  nearly 
everything  that  goes  to  make  up  these  books 
had  served  first  and  many  times  as  lectures. 
The  impression  which  Emerson  made  upon 
the  platform  was  captivating  and  command 
ing.  His  voice  and  manner  alike  exercised 
a  unique  charm.  "  I  have  heard  some  great 
speakers  and  some  accomplished  orators," 
said  Lowell,  "  but  never  any  that  so  moved 
and  persuaded  men  as  he."  "  His  voice 
and  manner,"  writes  Andrew  D.  White,  re 
ferring  to  the  first  time  he  heard  Emerson 
lecture,  "  seemed  to  me  the  best  I  had  ever 
known."  "  Emerson's  voice,"  said  Whipple, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  211 

"  had  a  strange  power  which  affected  me 
more  than  any  other  voice  I  ever  heard  on 
the  stage  or  on  the  platform."  Such  trib 
utes  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  alike 
from  those  who  heard  him  in  America  and 
in  England.  In  many  places  in  England 
Emerson  gave  the  lectures  on  "  Represen 
tative  Men,"  which  treat  several  of  the  same 
subjects, —  Shakespeare,  Napoleon  and,  I 
was  about  to  say,  Goethe,  but  I  remember 
that  Carlyle  purposely  omitted  Goethe  from 
his  course,  complimentarily  telling  his  hearers 
that  they  were  not  up  to  it, —  which  Carlyle 
had  treated  in  his  course  on  "  Heroes  and 
Hero-worship  "  delivered  during  his  brief 
experience  as  a  lecturer  in  London,  ten 
years  before.  In  London  Emerson  de 
livered  a  special  course  on  the  "  Mind  and 
Manners  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  Car 
lyle  being  among  his  hearers.  These  lect 
ures  were  delivered  in  the  same  place,  evi 
dently, —  Portman  Square, —  where  Carlyle's 
own  lectures  were  given.  "Edward  Street, 
Portman  Square,  the  only  free  room  there 
was,"  he  says  in  "  Reminiscences."  Emer 
son  also  gave  certain  lectures  in  Exeter 


212      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Hall,  at  one  of  which  Carlyle  was  present. 
"  He  was  seated  by  the  joyful  committee," 
Emerson  writes  his  wife,  "  directly  behind 
me  as  I  spoke  —  a  thing  odious  to  me." 
Froude  tells  us  that  the  first  time  he  ever  saw 
Carlyle  was  at  Emerson's  last  London  lect 
ure,  where  he  was  pointed  out  to  him  by 
Clough ;  and  he  says,  "  I  heard  his  loud, 
kindly,  contemptuous  laugh  when  the  lect 
urer  ended."  Carlyle's  highest  praise  of  the 
first  lectures,  to  Emerson  himself,  had  been 
that  they  were  "  Emersonian  "  :  to  others  he 
called  them  "  Moonshine."  But  he  spoke 
of  some  of  the  later  lectures  as  "  intellectual 
sonatas  "  ;  and  Emerson  himself  was  "  the 
seraphic  man." 

Carlyle  abominated  lecturing.  "  Detest 
able  mixture  of  prophecy  and  play-actor- 
ism,"  is  the  way  he  describes  his  work  as  a 
lecturer,  in  "Reminiscences" — "vilest  welter 
of  odious  confusions,  horrors  and  repug 
nancies."  "Nothing  could  well  be  hate- 
fuller  to  me  ;  but  I  was  obliged.  .  .  .  How  we 
drove  together,  we  poor  two,  to  our  place  of 
execution,  she  with  a  little  drop  of  brandy 
to  give  me  at  the  very  last !  "  Yet  Harriet 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          213 

Martineau,  who  was  present  at  many  of  the 
lectures,  assures  us  that  the  merits  of  his  dis 
courses  were  so  great  that  he  might  probably 
have  gone  on  year  after  year  with  improving 
success  and  perhaps  ease  ;  but  the  struggle 
with  nervous  excitement  and  ill-health  was 
too  severe.  Carlyle  delivered  three  or  four 
courses  of  these  lectures  in  London.  <c  Our 
main  revenue  three  or  four  years  now  was 
lectures."  The  last  of  these  courses  was 
that  on  tc  Heroes  and  Hero-worship/'  the 
concluding  words  of  which  will  be  remem 
bered. 

The  second  course  was  on  the  "  History 
of  Literature,  or  the  Successive  Periods  of 
European  Culture  from  Homer  to  Goethe." 
A  careful  abstract  of  these  lectures,  by  Pro 
fessor  Edward  Dowden,  from  what  was  evi 
dently  a  very  full  manuscript  report,  has 
been  published.  The  history  of  culture  is 
viewed,  in  these  lectures,  as  a  succession  of 
faiths,  interrupted  by  periods  of  scepticism. 
The  faith  of  Greece  and  Rome  is  succeeded 
by  the  Christian  faith,  with  an  interval  of 
pagan  scepticism.  The  Christian  faith,  after 
the  interval  of  Christian  scepticism  repre- 


214     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

sented  by  Voltaire  and  culminating  in  the 
French  Revolution,  is  transforming  itself 
into  a  new  thing  not  yet  capable  of  defini 
tion,  of  which  Goethe  in  "  Wilhelm  Meister  " 
and  the  "  Westostlicher  Divan  "  is  a  herald. 
Many  passages  in  these  lectures,  on  Dante, 
Shakespeare,  Luther  and  the  Reformation, 
the  French  Revolution,  and  German  Litera 
ture,  are  much  the  same  as  we  find  in  others 
of  Carlyle's  writings,  but  put  in  a  way 
often  fresh  and  always  forcible. 

Carlyle's  first  lecture  in  London  was  on 
May  i,  1837.  Dr.  Chalmers  was  also  lect 
uring  in  London  at  the  time ;  and  those  in 
terested  in  coincidences  may  like  to  know 
that  on  the  evening  of  that  day  Browning's 
"  StrafTord  "  was  produced  for  the  first  time 
by  Macready  at  Co  vent  Garden  Theatre. 
The  'Times  gave  a  very  friendly  notice  of 
this  first  lecture  by  Carlyle,  observing  that 
"  the  lecturer,  who  seems  new  to  the  mere 
technicalities  of  public  speaking,  exhibited 
proofs,  before  he  had  done,  of  many  of  its 
higher  and  nobler  attributes,  gathering  self- 
possession  as  he  proceeded."  It  was  agoniz 
ing  business  for  Carlyle ;  but  Mrs.  Carlyle 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  215 

"  had  a  steady  hope  "  in  him.  The  impres 
sion  which  he  made  as  a  lecturer  was  really 
much  better  than  he  would  lead  us  to  sup 
pose.  A  writer  in  the  Examiner,  perhaps 
Leigh  Hunt,  in  noticing  the  first  two  lect 
ures  on  the  "  History  of  Literature/'  said  : 
"He  again  extemporizes,  he  does  not  read. 
We  doubted,  on  hearing  the  Monday's  lect 
ure,  whether  he  would  ever  attain  in  this  way 
to  the  fluency  as  well  as  depth  for  which  he 
ranks  among  celebrated  talkers  in  private ; 
but  Friday's  discourse  relieved  us.  He 
strode  away  like  Ulysses  himself,  and  had 
only  to  regret,  in  common  with  his  audience, 
the  limits  to  which  the  one  hour  confined 
him."  George  Ticknor  was  present  at  the 
ninth  lecture  of  this  course,  and  he  noted  in 
his  diary  (June  i,  1838):  "He  is  a  rather 
small,  spare,  ugly  Scotchman,  with  a  strong 
accent,  which  I  should  think  he  takes  no 
pains  to  mitigate.  To-day  he  spoke,  as  I 
think  he  commonly  does,  without  notes,  and 
therefore  as  nearly  extempore  as  a  man  can 
who  prepares  himself  carefully,  as  was  plain 
he  had  done.  He  was  impressive,  I  think, 
though  such  lecturing  could  not  well  be  very 


216      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

popular ;  and  in  some  parts,  if  he  were  not 
poetical,  he  was  picturesque."  Ticknor  es 
timates  the  audience  at  about  one  hundred. 
We  read  that  Emerson  had  a  thousand 
hearers  at  his  lecture  on  Montaigne,  in  Lon 
don,  and  that  he  was  greeted  with  loud 
applause.  Perhaps  this  contrast  in  point  of 
platform  popularity  was  one  thing  that  made 
Mrs.  Carlyle,  as  Espinasse  fancied,  view 
Emerson  with  "  a  certain  wife-like  jealousy, 
as  a  sort  of  rival  of  her  husband,"  although 
the  latter's  platform  days  had  long  been 
over.  We  have  pleasant  glimpses  of  Emer 
son's  London  lectures  from  Henry  Crabbe 
Robinson  and  Harriet  Martineau.  After 
the  first  London  lecture  the  following  ac 
count  appeared  in  Jerrold's  Newspaper,  and 
it  is  interesting  as  preserving  the  impression 
which  Emerson  made  as  a  lecturer  upon 
an  English  audience  in  which  Carlyle  sat : 
"  Precisely  at  four  o'clock  the  lecturer  glided 
in,  and  suddenly  appeared  at  the  reading- 
desk.  Tall,  thin,  his  features  aquiline,  his 
eye  piercing  and  fixed,  the  effect,  as  he 
stood  quietly  before  his  audience,  was  at 
first  somewhat  startling,  and  then  nobly  im- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  217 

pressive.  Having  placed  his  manuscript  on 
the  desk  with  nervous  rapidity,  and  paused, 
the  lecturer  then  quickly  and,  as  it  were, 
with  a  flash  of  action,  turned  over  the  first 
leaf,  whispering  at  the  same  time,  c  Gentle 
men  and  ladies.'  The  initial  sentences  were 
pronounced  in  a  low  tone,  a  few  words  at 
a  time,  hesitatingly,  as  if  then  extemporane 
ously  meditated  and  not,  as  they  really  were, 
premeditated  and  forewritten.  Time  was 
thus  given  for  the  audience  to  meditate 
them,  too.  Meanwhile,  the  meaning,  as  it 
were,  was  dragged  from  under  the  veil  and 
covering  of  the  expression,  and  ever  and 
anon  a  particular  phrase  was  so  emphatically 
italicized  as  to  command  attention.  There 
was,  however,  nothing  like  acquired  elocu 
tion,  no  regular  intonation,  in  fact,  none  of 
the  usual  oratorical  artifices,  but  for  the  most 
part  a  shapeless  delivery  (only  varied  by  cer 
tain  nervous  twitches  and  angular  movements 
of  the  hands  and  arms  curious  to  see  and 
even  to  smile  at),  and  calling  for  much  co 
operation  on  the  part  of  the  auditor  to  help 
out  its  shortcomings.  Along  with  all  this, 
there  was  an  eminent  bonhomie,  earnestness 


218      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

and  sincerity,  which  bespoke  sympathy  and 
respect — nay,  more,  secured  veneration." 

Carlyle's  love  of  lecturing  evidently  did 
not  increase  with  his  experience  of  it ;  and 
from  the  time  of  "  Heroes  and  Hero-wor 
ship  "  to  the  address  as  Lord  Rector  of 
Edinburgh  I  do  not  think  he  ever  spoke  in 
public.  The  only  passage  which  I  recall  in 
his  writings  in  which  he  speaks  with  some 
real  enthusiasm  about  lecturing  or  preaching 
is  in  a  letter  to  Emerson  at  the  time  of  his 
lectures  on  "  Heroes  and  Hero-worship " 
and  when  Emerson  was  trying  to  induce  him 
to  come  to  America.  He  wrote  after  one  of 
these  lectures,  along  with  sundry  critical  ob 
servations  upon  his  lecturing,  that  he  had 
been  "  gratified  nevertheless  to  see  how  the 
rudest  speech  of  a  man's  heart  goes  into  men's 
hearts,  and  is  the  welcomest  thing  there. 
Withal  I  regretted  that  I  had  not  six  months 
of  preaching,  whereby  to  learn  to  preach 
and  explain  things  fully  !  In  the  fire  of  the 
moment  I  had  all  but  decided  on  setting  out 
for  America  this  autumn,  and  preaching  far 
and  wide  like  a  very  lion  there.  Quit  your 
paper  formulas,  my  brethren, —  equivalent  to 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          219 

old  wooden  idols,  undiv'me  as  they ;  in  the 
name  of  God  understand  that  you  are  alive 
and  that  God  is  alive  !  Did  the  Upholsterer 
make  this  Universe  ?  Were  you  created  by 
the  Tailor  ?  I  tell  you,  and  conjure  you  to 
believe  me  literally,  No,  a  thousand  times, 
No !  Thus  did  I  mean  to  preach,  on 
€  Heroes,  Hero-worship,  and  the  Heroic/  in 
America  too." 

For  many  years  at  this  period  of  his  life 
Carlyle's  thoughts  turned  much  towards 
America.  The  important  chapter  in  the 
history  of  English  Puritanism  which  the 
founding  of  New  England  constituted 
deeply  affected  him.  The  "  Mayflower,"  to 
him,  bore  a  richer  freight  than  the  cc  Argo," 
and  the  thought  of  her  desperately  breasting 
the  seas  stirred  his  eloquence.  But  it  was 
not  simply  the  historical  that  moved  him. 
As  late  as  1 849  he  writes  to  Emerson  of  the 
Western  frontiersman  and  the  America  wait 
ing  for  its  poet,  and  waiting  to  be  born,  in 
a  buoyant  and  prophetic  strain,  such  as 
might  find  place  in  the  page  of  Whitman  or 
of  Emerson  himself:  "  How  beautiful  to 
think  of  lean,  tough  Yankee  settlers,  tough 


The  Influence  of  Emerson 

as  gutta-percha,  with  most  occult  unsubdu- 
able  fire  in  their  belly,  steering  over  the 
Western  Mountains  to  annihilate  the  jungle, 
and  bring  bacon  and  corn  out  of  it  for  the 
Posterity  of  Adam  !  The  Pigs  in  about  a 
year  eat  up  all  the  rattlesnakes  for  miles 
round :  a  most  judicious  function  on  the 
part  of  the  Pigs.  Behind  the  Pigs  comes 
Jonathan  with  his  all-conquering  plough 
share, —  glory  to  him  too  !  Oh,  if  we  were 
not  a  set  of  Cant-ridden  blockheads,  there  is 
no  Myth  of  Athene  or  Herakles  equal  to 
this  fact ;  —  which  I  suppose  w/7/find  its  real 
*  Poets '  some  day  or  other ;  when  once 
the  Greek,  Semitic  and  multifarious  other 
Cobwebs  are  swept  away  a  little ! "  The 
thought  of  Carlyle  as  a  possible  pioneer 
beside  the  Missouri  or  the  Platte  is  even 
more  stirring  than  the  thought  of  him  as  the 
shepherd  of  a  Transcendental  flock  beside 
the  Concord  and  the  Charles.  It  was  his 
"  odd  dream  "  that  he  "  might  end  in  the 
western  woods." 

Both  Carlyle  and  Emerson  got  their  new 
birth  from  Germany, —  Carlyle  immediately, 
from  Schelling,  Richter,  Schiller,  and  Goethe ; 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  221 

Emerson  mediately,  from  Coleridge  and 
Carlyle  himself.  Of  the  early  group  of 
New  England  Transcendentalists  Emerson 
tells  us  that  "  perhaps  they  only  agreed  in 
having  fallen  upon  Coleridge  and  Words 
worth  and  Goethe,  then  on  Carlyle,  with 
pleasure  and  sympathy."  "  He  is  almost 
more  at  home  in  our  literature  than  our 
selves,"  Goethe  said  of  Carlyle.  It  was  the 
Germanism  of  Carlyle  and  his  close  relations 
with  Goethe  which  especially  drew  Emerson 
to  him  at  the  first.  He  had  already  found 
in  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  a  higher  form 
of  thought  than  Andrews  Norton  had  to 
teach ;  he  had  gone  from  one  Boston  church 
to  another  on  Sunday  mornings  to  hear 
Everett,  fresh  from  his  German  studies; 
and  his  brother  William  had  been  to  Ger 
many  to  study  theology,  and  had  even  gone 
to  Goethe  himself,  to  get  his  help  about  his 
doubts  and  duties.  The  indebtedness  of 
both  Carlyle  and  Emerson  to  German  litera 
ture  and  thought  was  long  greater  than  to  al 
most  all  other  sources.  They  were  both,  it 
is  right  to  say,  an  integral  part  of  the  great 
German  movement  in  thought,  originating 


222      The  Influence  of  Emerson   . 

in  Lessing,  Herder,  Kant,  and  Goethe.  Yet 
Emerson  never  had  a  "  new  birth,"  either 
through  German  influence  or  any  other, 
in  the  way  in  which  Carlyle  had.  His  in 
tellectual  life  was  not  a  struggle,  with  its 
crises,  but  a  steady  and  serene  unfolding 
and  enrichment ;  and  it  may  fairly  be  ques 
tioned,  as  the  English  critic  questions 
whether  he  would  not  have  been  essentially 
the  same  if  he  had  never  met  Carlyle, 
whether  he  would  not  also  have  been  the 
same  had  he  never  read  Goethe, —  to  whom, 
nevertheless,  his  obligations  were  so  distinct 
and  great. 

It  was  the  example  of  Schiller  which  en 
couraged  Carlyle  to  venture  on  the  literary 
life.  "  The  biographies  of  English  men  of 
letters,"  he  says  somewhere,  "  are  the  wretch- 
edest  chapters  in  our  history,  except  the 
Newgate  Calendar."  But  Germany  fur 
nished  brighter  examples ;  and  the  situation 
of  Schiller  especially,  a  youth  of  poverty, 
obstructions  of  all  sorts,  bad  health,  and  the 
despondent  tendency,  was  like  his  own, 
while  Schiller's  unswerving  fidelity,  his  firm 
moral  convictions,  enduring  through  the 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  223 

breaking  up  of  creeds,  and  his  final  triumph 
gave  confidence  and  inspiration. 

From  Schiller  and  like  Schiller,  Carlyle 
turned  to  Goethe,  and  found  in  him  full 
satisfaction  to  the  end.  "  Goethe  especially 
was  my  evangelist/'  he  said.  If  anybody's 
disciple,  Carlyle  was  Goethe's  disciple. 
"Emerson,"  Mr.  Sanborn  says  rightly, 
"resembled  Goethe  more  than  Carlyle  re 
sembled  Schiller  "  ;  although  Grimm  rightly 
notes,  in  comparing  Emerson  with  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  that  he  was  like  Schiller  in 
coming  to  the  front  in  public  emergencies, 
sharing  the  deep  feelings  of  his  time  and 
people,  to  which  Goethe  was  so  often  in 
different,  turning  seldom  to  anything  save 
what  was  congenial.  It  must  be  remem 
bered  here  that  Carlyle,  in  his  essay  on 
Goethe,  repeats  with  sympathy  the  declara 
tion  of  Schiller,  that  the  poet  is  a  citizen  not 
only  of  his  country,  but  of  his  time ;  what 
ever  occupies  and  interests  men  in  general 
will  interest  him  still  more.  Emerson  called 
no  man  master  and  had  far  less  of  the  element 
of  discipleship  in  him  than  Carlyle ;  but  he 
pronounced  Goethe  the  leading  mind  of  the 


224     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

century,  and  Grimm,  in  writing  of  Goethe, 
acknowledges  his  debt  to  Emerson  for  the 
point  of  view  from  whence  correctly  to  judge 
him.  "  Since  Shakespeare  there  has  been 
no  mind  of  equal  compass  to  Goethe's. 
There  is  the  wise  man.  He  has  the  largest 
range  of  thought,  the  most  catholic  mind ; 
a  person  who  has  spoken  in  every  science, 
and  has  added  to  the  scientific  lore  of  other 
students,  and  who  represents  better  than 
any  other  individual  the  progressive  mind 
of  the  present  age."  Place  beside  this  the 
judgment  of  Carlyle :  "  In  Goethe  we  dis 
cover  by  far  the  most  striking  instance,  in 
our  time,  of  a  writer  who  is,  in  strict  speech, 
what  Philosophy  can  call  a  Man.  He  is 
neither  noble  nor  plebeian,  neither  liberal  nor 
servile,  nor  infidel  nor  devotee, —  but  the 
best  excellence  of  all  these,  joined  in  pure 
union,  ca  clear  and  universal  Man.' '  Emer 
son  was  an  untiring  reader  of  Goethe,  urged 
to  it  by  Carlyle, —  read  every  one  of  the 
fifty-five  volumes  of  his  works,  including 
"The  Theory  of  Color,"  in  the  original, 
read  him  more  than  any  other  of  the  Ger 
mans,  more  probably  than  all  of  the  rest 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  225 

together ;  and  in  the  last  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  Herman  Grimm  (1871)  he  said, 
"  For  Goethe  I  think  I  have  an  always 
ascending  regard."  CfCWilhelm  Meister,'" 
he  once  said,  "  contains  the  analysis  of  life  "  ; 
but  "Faust"  he  "could  not  read  nor  en 
dure,"  and  he  confessed  late  in  life  that  he 
was  unfamiliar  with  the  Second  Part.  Less 
the  disciple  of  Goethe  than  Carlyle,  Emerson 
is  more  like  him, —  like  him  in  his  interest 
in  nature  as  well  as  in  man,  his  confidential 
love  of  nature,  in  his  love  of  art,  in  the  poet 
in  him,  in  the  enjoyment  of  life,  above  all 
in  his  calm  repose.  There  was  little  of  the 
Olympian  about  Carlyle,  little  of  the  Goethe 
temperament.  He  was  more  like  Fichte 
among  the  Germans.  Without  dyspepsia, 
he  would  have  been  a  Fichte ;  with  dyspep 
sia,  Fichte's  "Addresses  to  the  German 
People  "  and  "  Characteristics  of  the  Present 
Age "  would  have  been  like  "  Past  and 
Present "  and  "  Latter-day  Pamphlets." 
Goethe  was  less  than  Emerson  in  ethical  and 
religious  stature.  If  to  his  other  qualities 
had  been  added  the  moral  elevation  of  Kant, 
he  would  have  been  the  greater  Emerson. 


226      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

The  moral  temptations,  the  self-compla 
cency,  and  the  lack  of  aspiration  in  Goethe, 
which  made  Parker  —  most  mistakenly  — 
rank  his  manhood  and  his  influence  alike 
below  Voltaire's,  and  made  him  "  rather  be 
Blake  sweeping  Tromp  out  of  the  Channel 
for  the  nation's  sake,"  Emerson  was  deeply 
conscious  of.  Goethe's  thinking,  though  of 
great  altitude,  he  found  a  table-land,  without 
the  cc  great  felicities  and  miracles  of  poetry." 
"  Of  Shakespeare  and  the  transcendent  muse, 
no  syllable."  Emerson  was  no  believer  in 
culture  for  culture's  sake ;  and  he  cannot 
forgive  Goethe,  being  the  great  man  that  he 
was,  for  not  being  a  greater  man,  "  a  re 
deemer  of  the  human  mind."  He  was  "  the 
poet  of  the  Actual,  not  of  the  Ideal ;  the 
poet  of  limitation,  not  of  possibility ;  of 
this  world,  and  not  of  religion  and  hope." 

Men  of  striking  originality  both,  most 
quotable  writers  of  the  century,  Carlyle  and 
Emerson  have  both  been  peculiarly  quoters 
and  men  of  books,  men  who  smack  of  the 
library.  The  best  thing  that  the  university 
does  for  a  man,  said  Emerson  in  his  better 
way,  is  to  place  him  in  intelligent  possession 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          227 

of  the  keys  of  the  library.  Books  are  the 
scholar's  tools.  Emerson's  essay  on  "  Books  " 
should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  every  young 
man  beginning  life.  "The  colleges,"  he 
said,  "  whilst  they  provide  us  with  libraries, 
furnish  no  professor  of  books ;  and  I  think 
no  chair  is  so  much  wanted."  Carlyle  said 
the  same  thing  in  almost  the  same  words ; 
and  both  would  have  rejoiced  at  the  degree 
to  which  many  of  our  great  modern  libra 
rians,  in  colleges  and  out  of  them,  construe 
it  as  one  of  their  regular  and  main  functions 
to  be  professors  of  books.  One  would  like 
to  write  an  essay  upon  Emerson  in  the  Study, 
dealing  with  the  books  which  influenced 
him  and  with  his  essays  in  criticism.*  One 

*  Dr.  Holmes  gives  an  interesting  table  of  the  twenty-seven  men 
whom  Emerson  mentions  twenty  times  or  more,  ranging  from  Shake 
speare  (112)  to  Chaucer,  Coleridge,  and  Michael  Angelo  (20).  See 
Cabot,  vol.  i.,  288  $  also  the  section  in  John  Morley's  essay  on 
Emerson  which  deals  with  Emerson's  use  of  books  and  breadth  of 
literary  reference.  One  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  of  that  very 
valuable  little  volume  of  "Talks  with  Emerson,"  by  Mr.  Charles  J. 
Woodbury,  which  was  a  distinct  new  contribution  to  our  knowledge 
of  Emerson's  thought,  is  that  entitled  "  Criticism,"  reporting  Emer 
son's  judgments  upon  many  writers,  some  not  elsewhere  touched  upon. 
Gibbon,  although  a  great  example  of  diligence  and  truth,  was  "a 
mind  without  a  shrine."  "Read  Chaucer!  " — and  he  repeated  with 
out  hesitation  several  verses  from  his  "Good  Counsel,"  saying,  "I 


228      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

would  like  to  do  the  same  concerning  Car- 
lyle.  So  much  can  easily  be  said, —  that 
where  we  have  an  essay  by  Carlyle  on  any 
great  writer, —  Goethe,  Richter,  Novalis,  Vol 
taire,  Johnson,  Scott,  or  Burns, —  there  we 
almost  always  have  the  best  essay  upon  the 

would  copy  it  and  have  it  always  with  me;  it  is  a  scripture."  "I 
have  seen  an  expurgated  edition  of  Chaucer,"  he  added.  "Shun  it! 
Shun  expurgated  editions  of  any  one,  even  Aphra  Bene  or  Francois 
Villon.  They  will  be  expurgating  the  Bible  and  Shakespeare  next." 
"  Don  Quixote"  and  novels  generally  "made  him  yawn."  "Why 
read  novels  ?  We  meet  stranger  creatures  than  their  heroes.  What 
writer  of  stories  would  not  be  derided  if  he  gave  us  creatures  as  impos 
sible  as  Nero  or  Alva  or  Joan  of  Arc  ?  "  His  depreciation  of  novels 
here,  however,  must  be  offset  by  his  warm  word  of  appreciation  and 
prophecy  of  the  novel's  future,  in  his  essay  on  "Books,"  and  his 
remarks  in  his  letters  to  Grimm,  that,  when  he  read  rarely  a  good  novel, 
he  felt  rebuked  that  he  did  not  use  "these  delicious  relations,"  and 
that  he  thought  the  tale,  as  opposed  to  the  drama,  "the  form  that 
is  always  in  season."  Of  the  American  historians,  Prescott  was 
"thorough,"  Motley  "painstaking,"  and  Bancroft  "reads  enor 
mously,"  and  "always  understands  his  subject"  j  but  neither  of  them 
"lifts  himself  off  his  feet"  ;  they  "have  no  lilt  in  them,"  "Do 
not  read  by  the  bookful,"  he  said.  "Often  a  chapter  is  enough. 
The  glance  reveals  when  the  gaze  obscures.  Skip  the  paragraphs  that 
do  not  talk  to  you."  "  Avoid  all  secondhand,  borrowing  books  : 
*  Collections  of — ,'  '  Beauties  of — ,'  etc.  Do  your  own  quarrying." 
"  Read  those  men  who  are  not  lazy,  who  put  themselves  into  contact 
with  realities."  "All  criticism  dealing  with  isolated  points  is  super 
ficial ;  the  prevailing  thought  and  disposition  are  your  main  care." 
"Stop  reading  if  you  find  yourself  becoming  absorbed."  "Shut  the 
book  when  your  own  thought  comes."  "Seek  first  spirit,  and 
second  spirit,  and  third  and  evermore  spirit." 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          229 

subject  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  library. 
Carlyle  was  probably  the  greatest  reader  of 
books,  as  well  as  the  greatest  writer  of  them, 
in  the  England  of  his  time.  Both  men  were 
too  great  to  entertain  the  upstart's  fancy 
that  greatness  and  originality  lie  in  inde 
pendence  and  trust  in  one's  own  intuitions. 
"The  great  man,"  said  Emerson,  "must 
be  a  great  reader,  and  possess  great  assimilat 
ing  power.  He  must  depend  upon  others, 
because  intuition  is  not  constant,  while  we 
must  try  our  own  intuitions  by  those  of 
other  minds." 

No  men  of  our  time  have  written  better 
upon  books  and  reading  than  Carlyle  and 
Emerson,  few  have  passed  better  literary 
judgments,  none  have  kept  company  with 
better  books.  Both  were  at  home  with  the 
Elizabethan  and  Puritan  writers.  One-third 
of  the  selections  in  "  Parnassus "  are  from 
the  seventeenth  century.  Both  have  written 
in  the  same  strain  of  Shakespeare ;  but  it  is 
clear  that  Emerson  really  lived  closest  to 
him.  "  Shakespeare  was  a  wonder,"  he  said 
to  Mr.  Woodbury  :  "  he  struck  twelve  every 
time."  "  Perhaps  the  human  mind,"  he  said, 


230     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

''would  be  a  gainer  if  all  the  secondary 
writers  were  lost  —  say,  in  England,  all  but 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Bacon."  Carlyle 
always  spoke  slightingly  of  Bacon.  To  Em 
erson,  Bacon's  essays  were  "  a  little  bible  of 
earthly  wisdom."  Bacon  and  Berkeley  "  have 
been  friends  to  me." 

It  is  singular  that  Carlyle's  references  to 
Milton  are  so  brief,  casual,  and  unimportant. 
Above  all  men  he  loved  the  great  Puri 
tans.  "  I  don't  know,  in  any  history  of 
Greece  or  Rome,  where  you  will  get  so  fine 
a  man  as  Oliver  Cromwell."  He  loved 
John  Knox  in  highest  measure  —  and  all 
men  of  that  class.  His  "  Cromwell  "  is  the 
best  contribution  yet  to  the  history  of  Puri 
tanism,  and  that  one  of  his  historical  books 
which  will  longest  endure.  By  interesting 
coincidence,  the  only  history  which  Emerson 
ever  wished  that  he  might  write  was  a 
history  of  Calvinism  with  reference  to  its 
influence  on  New  England.  We  should 
have  expected  a  glowing  panegyric  of  Mil 
ton  in  the  "  Cromwell  "  ;  but  it  is  not  there, 
although  we  are  sure  that  this  is  but  an  un 
fortunate  accident,  and  that  Carlyle  would 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          231 

have  written  it  heartily.  Emerson  declared 
Milton  to  stand  foremost  of  all  men  in 
literary  history,  and  so  of  all  men,  in  the 
power  to  inspire.  There  was  no  man  in 
history,  literary  or  political,  whom  he 
honored  more  or  with  whom  he  more  natu 
rally  measured  himself.  Dr.  Holmes  dwells 
on  the  parallelisms  in  their  characters,  their 
writings,  and  their  lives.  Emerson  thinks 
of  Milton  on  the  ship  which  bears  him  back 
to  America  from  his  first  European  visit] 
"  Milton  did  not  love  moral  perfection  more' 
than  I."  Milton  was  the  subject  of  one  of  \ 
his  earliest  lectures  in  Boston.  In  Milton 
"  the  man  was  paramount  to  the  poet "  ;  and 
he  remarks  upon  the  reason,  the  force  of 
which  he  had  felt  in  his  own  life,  why,  "  the 
most  devout  man  in  history,  he  frequented 
no  church."  cc  Better  than  any  other  he  has 
discharged  the  office  of  every  great  man, 
namely,  to  raise  the  idea  of  Man  in  the  minds  \ 
of  his  contemporaries  and  of  posterity.  .  .  . 
Human  nature  in  these  ages  is  indebted  to 
him  for  its  best  portrait."  "  There  is  not 
in  literature,"  he  said,  <c  a  more  noble  out 
line  of  a  wise  external  education  than  that 


232     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

which  Milton  drew  up,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
six,  in  his  letter  to  Samuel  Hartlib " ;  and 
his  own  great  address  on  Education,  the 
most  pregnant  and  inspiring  word  on  edu 
cation  yet  spoken  by  an  American,  the 
most  memorable  English  word  since  Milton, 
has  the  same  dominant  note  which  Milton 
sounded, —  the  note  of  nobleness.  During 
his  last  visit  to  London  he  went  to  Milton's 
grave,  and  inquired,  "  Do  many  come  here  ? " 
"  Yes,  sir,  Americans."  This  picture  of  Em 
erson  by  Milton's  grave  in  the  old  Cripple- 
gate  church  is  also  to  be  commended  to  the 
painter. 

Scott,  of  whom  Carlyle  wrote  one  of  his 
most  interesting  essays,  seemed  to  Emerson 
to  inspire  his  readers  more  than  any  other 
modern  writer  with  affection  to  his  own  per 
sonality,  and  in  the  strength  and  variety  of  his 
characters  to  approach  Shakespeare  nearest. 
"  There  are  no  books  for  boys,"  he  said, 
"like  the  poems  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.  c  Mar- 
mion,'  the  c  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,'  and 
the  c  Lady  of  the  Lake  '  surpass  everything 
we  have  for  boy-reading."  Burns  was  as 
dear  to  Emerson  as  to  Carlyle  himself. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  233 

"  The  Confession  of  Augsburg,  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence,  the  French  Rights  of 
Man  '  and  the  Marseillaise  are  not  more 
weighty  documents  in  the  history  of  free 
dom  than  the  songs  of  Burns.  ...  I  find  his 
great,  plain  sense  in  close  chain  with  the 
greatest  masters  —  Rabelais,  Shakespeare  in 
comedy,  Cervantes,  Butler  and  Burns. " 
"  My  excited  fancy,"  says  Mr.  Lowell,  in 
speaking  of  the  enthusiasm  of  Emerson's 
discourse  on  Burns,  "set  me  under  the 
bema,  listening  to  him  who  fulmined  over 
Greece."  * 

*  It  was  this  address  on  Burns  which  prompted  Judge  Hoar  to  the 
most  remarkable  tribute  ever  paid  to  the  eloquence  of  Emerson.  This 
was  in  his  letter  read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  in  May,  1882,  immediately  after  Emerson's  death.  Two  things 
he  wrote  to  emphasize.  The  first  was  Emerson's  power  as  a  historian, 
of  which  he  gave  an  impressive  instance,  and  then  added:  "The  sec 
ond  is  his  power  at  an  orator ,  rare  and  peculiar,  and  in  its  way  un 
equalled  among  our  contemporaries.  Many  of  us  can  recall  instances 
of  it,  and  there  are  several  prominent  in  my  recollection;  but  perhaps 
the  most  striking  was  his  address  at  the  Burns  centennial,  in  Boston, 
on  the  2,5th  of  January,  1859.  The  company  that  he  addressed  was 
a  queer  mixture.  First,  there  were  the  Burns  club, —  grave,  critical, 
and  long-headed  Scotchmen,  jealous  of  the  fame  of  their  countryman, 
and  doubtful  of  the  capacity  to  appreciate  him  in  men  of  other  blood. 
There  were  the  scholars  and  poets  of  Boston  and  its  neighborhood, 
and  professors  and  undergraduates  from  Harvard  College.  Then  there 
were  state  and  city  officials,  aldermen  and  common  councilmen, 


234     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Coleridge  was  one  of  Emerson's  masters ; 
it  was  because  Coleridge  led  him  to  the  Ger 
mans.  The  fame  of  Wordsworth  he  re 
garded  as  a  leading  fact  in  modern  literature. 
Wordsworth  was  "  the  poet  of  England  — 
the  only  one  who  comes  up  to  high-water 
mark."  cc  He  has  done  more  for  the  sanity 
of  this  generation,"  he  wrote  in  the  Dial, 
"  than  any  other  author "  ;  and  in  his  own 
Concord  quiet  he  felt  that  a  large  part  of 
this  sanity  was  in  living  in  Westmoreland 

brokers  and  bank  directors,  ministers  and  deacons,  doctors,  lawyers, 
and  '  carnal  self-seekers '  of  every  grade.  I  have  had  the  good  fort 
une  to  hear  many  of  the  chief  orators  of  our  time,  among  them 
Henry  Clay,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Ogden  Hoffman,  S.  S.  Prentiss, 
William  H.  Seward,  Charles  Sumner,  Wendell  Phillips,  George  Will 
iam  Curtis,  some  of  the  great  preachers,  and  Webster,  Everett, 
Choate,  and  Winthrop  at  their  best.  But  I  never  witnessed  such  an 
effect  of  speech  upon  men  as  Mr.  Emerson  apparently  then  attained. 
It  reached  at  once  to  his  own  definition  of  eloquence,  'a  taking  sov 
ereign  possession  of  the  audience.'  He  had  uttered  but  a  few  sen 
tences  before  he  seemed  to  have  welded  together  the  whole  mass  of 
discordant  material  and  lifted  them  to  the  same  height  of  sympathy  and 
passion.  He  excited  them  to  smiles,  to  tears,  to  the  wildest  enthu 
siasm.  His  tribute  to  Burns  is  beautiful  to  read,  perhaps  the  best 
which  the  occasion  produced  on  either  side  of  the  ocean.  But  the 
clear  articulation,  the  ringing  emphasis,  the  musical  modulation  of 
tone  and  voice,  the  loftiness  of  bearing,  and  the  radiance  of  his  face, 
all  made  a  part  of  the  consummate  charm.  When  he  closed,  the 
company  could  hardly  tolerate  any  other  speaker,  though  good  ones 
were  to  follow." 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          235 

and  out  of  London.  "  The  '  Excursion  '  was 
nearer  to  nature  than  anything  we  had  be 
fore.  ...  It  was  the  human  soul  in  these  last 
ages  striving  for  a  publication  of  itself."  He 
could  quote  almost  entirely  the  "  Prelude  " 
and  "  Excursion  "  ;  and  he  included  more 
selections  from  Wordsworth  in  his  "  Parnas 
sus  "  than  from  any  other  save  Shakespeare. 
From  Carlyle  on  Coleridge  in  the  Life  of 
Sterling,  and  on  Wordsworth  in  "  Rem 
iniscences  "  there  is  no  need  of  quoting. 
"  A  man  of  great  and  useless  genius  "  he 
calls  Coleridge  in  one  of  his  letters.  Southey 
Emerson  and  Carlyle  rated  alike.  When 
Landor  praised  Southey  to  Emerson,  Emer 
son  was  "  pestered "  by  it,  and  exclaimed, 
"  But  who  is  Southey  ?  "  When  Carlyle  read 
Southey's  article  on  the  Saint  Simonians  in 
the  Quarterly ',  he  said,  "  My  brother,  I  say 
unto  thee,  thou  art  a  poor  creature."  Lan 
dor  himself  was  one  of  the  four  eminent  men 
of  letters  —  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  and  Words 
worth  the  others  —  whom  Emerson  sought 
out  in  his  first  visit  to  Europe,  in  1833,  and 
to  whom  he  devoted  the  first  chapter  of  his 
"  English  Traits."  Noting  in  this  chapter 


236     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

that  Landor  is  "strangely  undervalued  in 
England,  usually  ignored,  and  sometimes 
savagely  attacked/'  he  records  his  own  admi 
ration  of  his  energy  and  creative  force,  and 
his  judgment  that  "year  after  year  the 
scholar  must  still  go  back  to  Landor  for  a 
multitude  of  elegant  sentences  —  for  wisdom, 
wit  and  indignation  that  are  unforgetable." 
He  writes  of  Landor  as  of  the  others  of  the 
four  in  the  Dial:  "We  do  not  recollect 
an  example  of  more  complete  independence 
in  literary  life;"  "  he  is  a  man  full  of  thoughts, 
but  not,  like  Coleridge,  a  man  of  ideas  "  ;  * 
and  as  late  at  least  as  1865  ne  was  st^  prais 
ing  Landor  in  yet  higher  terms. 

*  It  was  not  until  1856,  twenty-three  years  after  the  interview 
with  Landor  in  Florence,  that  "  English  Traits"  was  published  ;  and 
it  provoked  an  Open  Letter  from  Landor  to  Emerson,  published  in 
pamphlet  form  at  Bath,  which,  now  almost  forgotten  and  unknown, 
is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  literature.  Mannerly  and  courteous  through 
out,  it  gives  evidence  that  Landor  had  been  much  more  "  pestered " 
by  some  things  Emerson  had  said  about  himself  than  Emerson  had 
been  by  Landor 's  own  enthusiasm  about  Sou  they.  For  Sou  they  he 
again  takes  up  the  cudgel,  depreciating  Carlyle  and  Wordsworth  in 
contrast.  When  he  had  once  heard  Wordsworth  remark  that  he 
"would  not  give  five  shillings  for  all  of  Southey's  poetry,"  he  had 
told  a  friend  that  he  "  might  safely  make  such  investment  of  his 
money  and  throw  all  his  own  poetry  in."  Southey,  on  the  strength 
of  Lander's  early  poem,  "Gebir,"had  compared  him  with  Goethe, 
and  given  him  the  preference.  He  hastens  to  say  that  he  doesn't  con- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  237 

In  Byron,  Emerson  sees  a  perverted  will 
and  a  wasted  life,  once  speaks  of  his  genius 
as  "  unhallowed  "  ;  yet  to  Mr.  Thayer,  on 
the  California  trip  in  1871,  he  spoke  highly 
of  Byron  as  an  efficient  poet,  observing 
that  "  there  is  a  sort  of  scenic  and  general 
luck  about  him."  Carlyle,  whose  first  mes 
sage  to  the  world  almost  had  been,  "  Shut 
your  Byron  ;  open  your  Goethe,"  after 
wards,  when  he  heard  of  Byron's  death, 
affected  perhaps  by  Goethe's  own  great 
admiration  for  Byron,  felt  that  "  the  no 
blest  spirit  in  Europe "  was  gone.  "  If 

sider  this  the  greatest  praise  in  the  world  5  that,  in  his  judgment, 
"fifty  pages  of  Shelley  contain  more  true  poetry  than  a  hundred  pages 
of  Goethe,"  that  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  is  "  trash,"  and  that  Goethe 
couldn't  have  written  in  a  lifetime  any  twenty  of  his  own  "  Imaginary 
Conversations."  Gravitating  to  politics,  he  says,  "Democracy,  such 
as  yours  in  America,  is  my  abhorrence  "5  and  he  makes  a  vigorous 
p'ea  for  the  lost  art  of  assassination,  counting  the  stigma  placed  upon 
it  by  the  moderns  a  proof  of  our  lapse  from  classic  virtue,  and  calling 
especially  for  a  revival  of  it  with  reference  to  the  Austrian  tyrant  then 
trampling  upon  Italy.  It  might  be  guessed  that  here,  as  Emerson 
found  touching  other  things  in  1833,  Landor  "  carries  to  its  height 
the  love  of  freak  which  the  English  delight  to  indulge  "5  but  he  is 
entirely  serious.  As  concerns  Landor' s  depreciation  of  Goethe,  one 
remembers  that  Emerson  had  the  same  experience  with  Wordsworth. 
"He  proceeded  to  abuse  Goethe's  'Wilhelm  Meister'  heartily.  It 
was  full  of  all  manner  of  fornication.  He  had  never  gone  farther 
than  the  first  part ;  so  disgusted  was  he  that  he  threw  the  book  across 
the  room." 


238      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

they  had  said  the  sun  or  moon  was  gone 
out  of  the  heavens,"  wrote  Miss  Welsh, 
whom  Carlyle  only  two  years  before  had 
taught  to  shun  Byron,  "  it  could  not  have 
struck  me  with  the  idea  of  a  more  awful  or 
dreary  blank  in  the  creation  than  the  words, 
c  Byron  is  dead '  "  ;  and  Carlyle  answered, 
"The  news  of  his  death  came  upon  my 
heart  like  a  mass  of  lead  —  as  if  I  had 
lost  a  brother.  Late  so  full  of  fire  and 
generous  passion  and  proud  purposes ;  and 
now  forever  dumb.  Poor  Byron  !  and  but 
a  young  man,  still  struggling  amidst  the 
perplexities  and  sorrows  and  aberrations 
of  a  mind  not  arrived  at  maturity,  or  set 
tled  in  its  proper  place  in  life.  Had  he 
been  spared  to  the  age  of  three-score  and 
ten,  what  might  he  not  have  done,  what 
might  he  not  have  been  !  " 

Emerson  cc  never  could  endure  Shelley," 
Whipple  tells  us.  "  Shelley,  though  a  poetic 
mind,  is  never  a  poet,"  he  says  somewhere. 
"  I  cannot  read  Shelley  with  comfort,"  he 
said  to  Mr.  Woodbury.  "  His  visions 
are  not  in  accord  with  the  facts  ;  they  are 
not  accurate.  He  soars  to  sink."  One 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  239 

can  imagine  the  suffering,  however  one 
may  differ  from  Emerson's  judgment  of 
Shelley, —  and  I  find  its  severity  hard  to 
understand, —  with  which  he  would  have 
read  Mr.  Chapman's  judgment,  that  in 
"  Nature  "  he  showed  himself  "  a  sort  of 
Yankee  Shelley "  !  Swinburne  and  the 
Englishmen  of  the  fleshly  ilk  Emerson 
could  not  abide.  In  William  Morris's  verse 
he  found  much  to  admire,  but  he  wished  there 
were  less  of  it.  Of  Browning  and  Ruskin  he 
wrote  no  adequate  or  important  word.  As 
early  as  the  days  of  the  Dial,  he  discerned 
the  genius  of  Tennyson.  He  "wants  rude 
truth,  he  is  too  fine  "  ;  but  it  will  be  "long 
before  we  have  his  superior"  as  a  lyrist. 
He  met  Tennyson  in  London  in  1847,  and 
found  him  the  "most  satisfying"  of  the 
English  men  of  letters  whom  he  had  seen. 
"  I  do  not  meet,  in  these  late  decades,  such 
company  over  a  pipe,"  was  Carlyle's  appre 
ciation  of  Tennyson. 

There  was  almost  none  of  his  contem 
poraries  in  literary  London  for  whom 
Carlyle  had  real  admiration ;  there  were 
few  for  whom  he  even  expresses  respect. 


240      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

"  Among  the  scrambling  miscellany  of 
notables  that  hovered  about  us,  Leigh 
Hunt  was  probably  the  best," —  Leigh 
Hunt  deeply  impressed  Emerson  in  Lon 
don  as  a  pure  and  beautiful  spirit, — 
"  Charles  Lamb  the  worst."  Campbell's 
head  was  a  "  shop  "  and  his  heart  "  as  dry 
as  a  Greenock  kipper  ";  Proctor  was  a  good- 
natured  man,  but  "  essentially  a  small " ; 
De  Quincey,  "  the  dwarf  opium  -  eater," 
4C  carries  a  laudanum  bottle  in  his  pocket 
and  the  venom  of  a  wasp  in  his  heart"; 
Hazlitt  was  writing  his  way  through  France 
and  Italy,  "the  ginshops  and  pawnbrokers 
bewailing  his  absence."  "  Good  heavens  ! 
I  often  inwardly  exclaim,  and  is  this  the 
literary  world  ?  This  rascal  rout,  this  dirty 
rabble,  destitute  not  only  of  high  feeling  and 
knowledge  or  intellect,  but  even  of  com 
mon  honesty  !  .  .  .  Not  red-blooded  men 
at  all ;  only  things  for  writing  articles." 
Yet  we  must  remember  that  Emerson  and 
Goethe,  whom  Carlyle  esteemed  so  highly, 
were  his  contemporaries ;  and  we  must  not 
forget  his  enthusiasm  for  Dickens,  his  love 
for  Mill,  and  the  essay  on  the  Corn  Law 
Rhymes. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  241 

Emerson's  appreciation  of  his  American 
contemporaries  was  generous  and  enthusiastic. 
Channing,  who  belonged  more  perhaps  to 
the  preceding  generation  than  his  own,  he 
especially  revered.  He  was  "the  star  of 
the  American  church/'  <c  one  of  those  men 
who  vindicate  the  power  of  the  American 
race  to  produce  greatness."  Of  his  relation 
to  the  group  of  Transcendentalists  it  is  not 
necessary  to  speak.  He  had  great  admira 
tion  for  the  verses  of  Helen  Hunt;  he  re 
garded  Forceythe  Willson  as  a  poet  of  ex 
traordinary  promise ;  he  brought  Ellery 
Channing's  "Wanderer"  before  the  public; 
and  he  greeted  Walt  Whitman  "at  the  be 
ginning  of  a  great  career."  "  It  was  one 
part  of  Emerson's  mission,"  says  Sanborn, 
"  to  appreciate  the  best  of  contemporary 
authors  before  the  great  world  did  so.  Lan- 
dor,  Carlyle,  Charles  Reade  and  Matthew 
Arnold  are  cases  in  point,  not  to  mention 
Alcott,  Thoreau  and  Ellery  Channing, 
William  Allingham  and  David  Wasson." 
He  devoted  much  time  and  pains  to  secur 
ing  the  publication  of  Jones  Very's  essays 
and  poems.  Quick  in  praise  of  new  authors, 


242      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

he  was  plain  in  criticism.  Whitman's 
"  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  "  a  singular  blending 
of  the  Bhagavat  Ghita  and  the  New  York 
Herald." 

He  discussed  his  American  contemporaries 
very  freely  with  Mr.  Woodbury,  paying  trib 
ute  to  Dr.  Holmes's  acuteness,  fine  sensibil 
ity,  versatility,  and  catholicity  of  taste ;  to 
Lowell's  geniality  and  wit, — "  it  does  one 
good  to  read  him  "  ;  to  Thoreau,  of  whom 
he  talked  oftener  and  more  tenderly  than 
any  other,  calling  him  "  my  Spartan- 
Buddhist,"  "  a  man  whose  core  and  whose 
breath  was  conscience  "  ;  to  Forceythe  Will- 
son,  whose  parting  song  "  far  surpasses  Poe 
in  his  most  peculiar  vein  " ;  and  to  Alcott, 
whose  life  is  "  full  of  beatitudes."  "  Soc 
rates  thought  Athens  ought  to  support  him ; 
and  Alcott  thinks  Boston  commonwealth 
ought  to  support  him  —  and  it  ought." 
Louisa  Alcott  "  is,  and  is  to  be,  the  poet  of 
children ;  she  knows  their  angels."  Walt 
Whitman,  whose  "  Leaves  of  Grass "  is 
"wonderful,"  he  contrasts  with  Poe  and  his 
"happy  jingle," — almost  the  very  phrase, 
it  will  be  remembered,  which  he  used  con- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  243 

cerning  Poe  in  talking  with  Mr.  Howells. 
He  would  have  read  with  curious  surprise 
the  recent  dictum  of  one  of  our  leading  liter 
ary  journals,  that  the  three  greatest  Ameri 
can  men  of  letters  are  "  Emerson,  Haw 
thorne,  and  Poe."  He  would  have  said  that 
a  first  qualification  for  a  great  man  of  letters 
is  to  have  something  of  import  to  say ;  and 
he  would  have  named  a  dozen  poems  of 
Lowell's  —  to  go  no  farther  —  as  beautiful 
in  word  and  form  as  anything  of  Poe's, 
with  the  additional  merit  of  import.  The 
real  greatness  of  Hawthorne  he  failed  to 
appreciate.  "  No  one  ought  to  write  as 
Hawthorne  has,"  he  said ;  and  concern 
ing  "  The  Scarlet  Letter "  he  exclaimed, 
"  Ghastly,  ghastly  !  "  This  was  in  accord 
ance  with  a  general  principle  of  his.  "  I  do 
not  read  the  sad  in  literature,"  he  said.  He 
would  not  read  "  Les  Miserables."  "  In  all 
good  writings "  he  expected  to  find  some 
thing  "  hearty  or  happy."  "  Melancholy  is 
unendurable,"  he  said;  "grief  is  abnormal." 
The  extent  to  which  Emerson  pressed 
this  doctrine,  wholesome  and  necessary  as  it 
is  in  its  right  measure,  surely  marks  one 


244     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  his  limitations ;  and  in  the  argument  be 
tween  him  and  young  Woodbury,  which  the 
latter  reports,  the  student  has  the  stronger 
case,  showing  what  the  deep  and  tragical 
notes  are  which  breathe  through  the  Bible 
from  Genesis  to  Revelation,  from  the  story 
of  Job  to  the  story  of  Calvary ;  what  the 
problems  are  with  which  Greek  tragedy  and 
the  Eastern  scripture  deal ;  what  it  is  that 
Dante  wrote  into  his  poem  and  life  wrote 
into  Dante's  face ;  what  the  myriad  miseries 
and  sorrows  are  which  Shakespeare  was  "  too 
faithful  to  humanity  to  conceal";  and  what 
the  sights  were  which  blind  Milton  saw, — 
what  the  imperatives  to  "  Paradise  Lost," 
"  Samson  Agonistes,"  and  "  II  Penseroso." 
Perhaps  the  strongest  pages  in  Mr.  Morley's 
essay  are  those  in  which  he  similarly  points 
out  Emerson's  failure  to  grapple  as  Milton 
and  Michael  Angelo  and  Dante  and 
^Eschylus  and  Isaiah  grapple  —  yes,  and 
Hawthorne  and  Hugo  and  Carlyle  —  with 
the  world's  dark  tragedies  of  sin  and  suffer 
ing,  depravity  and  death.* 

*  To  Michael  Angelo  he  makes  concessions.      "  I  miss  cheerful 
ness,"  he  says,  writing  of  him  to  Herman  Grimm.      "He  is  tragic, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  245 

We  are  brought  here  so  close  to  the  point 
which  is  most  discussed  by  religious  critics 
in  their  essays  upon  Emerson,  the  point  of 
his  Christianism  in  relation  to  his  Hellenism, 
that  reference  should  be  made  to  his  own 
clearest  and  strongest  statement  of  his  posi 
tion.  That,  it  seems  to  me,  is  his  essay  on 
"  The  Tragic,"  which,  first  given  as  a  lect 
ure,  then  published  in  the  Dial,  stands  now 
as  the  last  essay  in  the  last  volume  of  his 
complete  Works,  with  its  last  words  these : 
"  The  intellect  in  its  purity  and  the  moral 
sense  in  its  purity  are  not  distinguished  from 
each  other,  and  both  ravish  us  into  a  region 
whereinto  these  passionate  clouds  of  sorrow 
cannot  rise."  Emerson  is  not  blind  to  the 
world's  sorrow.  His  first  words  are  :  "  He 
has  seen  but  half  the  universe  who  never  has 
been  shown  the  house  of  Pain."  But  he 
holds  that  "  all  sorrow  dwells  in  a  low  re 
gion."  The  real  tragic  element,  he  insists, 
is  almost  invariably  Terror;  and  Terror  is 
born  of  ignorance  of  our  own  real  nature  and 

like  Dante."  "But,"  he  adds,  "we  must  let  him  be  as  sad  as  he 
pleases.  He  is  one  of  the  indispensable  men  on  whose  credit  the  race 
goes."  He  pays  tribute  to  him,  also,  as  "a  noble,  suffering  soul, — 
poor,  that  others  may  be  rich." 


246     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

of  the  constitution  of  the  universe.  "All 
melancholy,  as  all  passion,  belongs  to  the  ex 
terior  life."  But  when  a  man  is  "  grounded 
in  the  divine  life  by  his  proper  roots," —  that 
is,  when  he  sees  the  end  from  the  beginning, 
as  God  sees  it, —  he  can  feel  neither  terror  nor 
sorrow ;  and  the  task  of  the  religious  man, 
the  son  of  God,  is  to  elevate  life  to  tran 
scendence  of  both.  Sorrow  and  suffering,  in 
a  word,  are  not  attributes  of  the  Infinite,  but 
of  the  finite  and  imperfect.  The  Divine  is 
joyful,  because  it  always  knows  the  function 
of  discipline  and  sees  that  the  end  is  good ; 
and  we  rise  to  this  confidence  and  serenity 
as  we  realize  our  own  divinity.  So  far  as 
we  are  God,  so  far  we  do  not  sorrow. 
There  is  no  other  word  of  Emerson  so 
Greek  as  this ;  but  here  and  not  elsewhere 
the  discussion  of  his  attitude  toward  suffer 
ing  and  sin  and  sorrow  must  begin. 

Emerson  was  greatly  attracted  by  Mon 
taigne.  When  a  boy,  he  found  a  volume  of 
Montaigne's  essays  among  his  father's  books. 
After  leaving  college,  it  came  again  to  his 
notice,  and  he  procured  the  remaining  vol 
umes.  "  I  remember  the  delight  and  won- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          247 

der,"  he  says,  "  in  which  I  lived  with  it.  It 
seemed  to  me  as  if  I  had  myself  written  the 
book  in  some  former  life,  so  sincerely  it 
spoke  to  my  thought  and  experience."  Yet 
he  once  said  to  a  young  man,  "You  shall 
not  read  Montaigne  and  be  a  poet/*  although 
at  the  same  time  he  noted  the  fact  that 
Montaigne's  Essays  was  the  only  book 
known  to  have  been  owned  by  Shakespeare. 
Of  Plutarch,  whom  he  loves,  he  says  :  "  He 
perpetually  suggests  Montaigne,  who  was 
the  best  reader  he  has  ever  found,  though 
Montaigne  excelled  his  master  in  the  point 
and  surprise  of  his  sentences.  Plutarch  had 
a  religion  which  Montaigne  wanted,  and 
which  defends  him  from  wantonness."  It 
is  noteworthy  that  among  Carlyle's  earliest 
writings  also  was  an  article  on  Montaigne  — 
one  of  the  articles  contributed  to  the  Edin 
burgh  Encyclopaedia  —  and  that  this  notice 
contains  no  word  about  Montaigne's  re- 
religious  scepticism,  but  treats  the  character 
purely  from  its  human  and  literary  sides. 
"  Montaigne's  faithful  delineation  of  human 
feelings,  in  all  their  strength  and  weakness, 
will  serve  as  a  mirror  to  every  mind  capable 
of  self-examination." 


248     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

It  was  through  Montaigne  that  Emerson 
and  John  Sterling  were  first  drawn  together. 
Sterling  wrote  a  loving  criticism  of  Mon 
taigne  in  the  Westminster  Review,  with  a 
journal  of  his  own  pilgrimage  to  Montaigne's 
estate  and  chateau,  which  attracted  Emer 
son's  attention ;  and  soon  after  he  records, 
"  Carlyle  writes  me  word  that  this  same  lover 
of  Montaigne  is  a  lover  of  me."  Sterling 
had  taken  "  Nature  "  to  his  heart ;  and  Car 
lyle  writes  of  him  to  Emerson  as  one  "  whom 
I  love  better  than  anybody  I  have  met  with 
since  a  certain  sky-messenger  alighted  to  me 
at  Craigenputtock  and  vanished  in  the  Blue 
again."  Emerson  and  Sterling  at  once  en 
tered  into  correspondence  ;  and  this  corre 
spondence,  extending  almost  to  the  day  of 
Sterling's  death,  and  recently  published  with 
a  tender  introduction  by  Emerson's  son, 
constitutes  one  of  the  most  beautiful  chapters 
in  the  biographies  of  the  two  men,  who 
strangely  never  met.  In  one  letter  Sterling 
writes  to  Emerson,  "  You  are  the  only  man 
in  the  world  with  whom,  though  unseen, 
I  feel  any  sort  of  nearness,"  making  us 
think  of  the  closeness  with  which  that  other 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          249 

rare  English  spirit,  whose  spiritual  struggles 
were  so  like  Sterling's,  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough,  was  drawn  to  Emerson.*  Emer 
son  felt  that  Sterling  "  had  certain  American 
qualities  in  his  genius."  To  Emerson 
Sterling  dedicated  in  the  following  lines 
his  tragedy  of  "  Strafford,"  published  the 
year  before  his  death  :  — 

"  Teacher  of  starry  wisdom,  high,  serene, 

Receive  the  gift  our  common  ground  supplies  ; 
Red  flowers,  dark  leaves,  that  ne'er  on  earth  had 

been 
Without  the  influence  of  sidereal  skies." 

Both  Emerson  and  Carlyle  read  much 
that  was  ephemeral  and  contemporaneous, 
studied  and  wrote  much  upon  the  social 
movements  of  their  period,  published  much 
in  the  magazines.  Emerson  was  editor  of 
two  reviews,  and  one  of  the  group  of  writers 
who  started  the  Atlantic  Monthly ;  and  he 
knew  the  value  of  newspapers  —  and  their 
danger  to  the  scholar.  "  Newspapers  have 
done  much  to  abbreviate  expression,  and 
so  to  improve  style.  They  are  to  occupy 

*  Herman  Grimm,  in  1867,  wrote  to  Emerson  in  almost  Sterling's 
words,  "I  can  mention  no  one  whom  I  wish  to  know  except  yourself." 


25°      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

during  your  generation,"  he  said  to  the 
Williams  student,  "  a  large  share  of  atten 
tion  ;  and  the  most  studious  and  engaged 
man  can  only  neglect  them  at  his  cost. 
But  have  little  to  do  with  them.  Learn 
how  to  get  their  best  without  their  getting 
yours.  Do  not  read  them  when  the  mind 
is  creative ;  and  do  not  read  them  thor 
oughly.  Remember  they  are  made  for 
everybody,  and  don't  try  to  get  what  isn't 
meant  for  you.  There  is  a  great  secret  in 
knowing  what  to  keep  out  of  the  mind  as 
well  as  what  to  put  in.  Give  yourself  only 
so  many  minutes  for  the  paper;  then  you 
will  learn  to  avoid  the  stuff  put  in  for 
people  who  have  nothing  to  think."  He 
would  give  to  Concord  and  Boston  and 
London  what  was  their  due ;  but  he  would 
not  let  the  young  schplar  forget  his  citizen 
ship  in  Rome  and  Athens  and  Palestine  and 
Persia. 

Emerson  greatly  loved  the  Persian  poets, 
and  he  wrote  a  preface  to  an  American  edi 
tion  of  Saadi's  "  Gulistan."  He  loved  the 
Vedas,  put  India  into  poems,  and  was  really 
the  first  to  turn  American  hunger  or  curi- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  251 

osity  toward  the  Orient.  The  time  which 
Emerson  gave  to  Persian  poetry  Carlyle 
gave  to  Norse  mythology ;  and  perhaps  he 
found  a  greater  affinity  with  his  own  char 
acter  in  Odin  and  Thor  than  Emerson 
found  in  Saadi  and  Hafiz. 

Both  men  lived  much  in  the  classical 
world,  Emerson  especially  with  Plato  and  Plu 
tarch.  The  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  with  whom  Arnold  chose  to  rank  him, 
were  especially  dear  to  him  in  his  youth. 
Emerson's  favorite  study  in  school  and 
college  days  was  Greek,  and  many  of 
his  translations  of  both  Greek  and  Latin 
authors  were  remarkably  good.  In  mathe 
matics  he  could  make  no  headway,  whereas 
Carlyle's  mathematical  ability  was  so  great 
as  to  have  drawn  the  attention  of  Legendre. 
He  translated  Legendre's  Geometry,  and  he 
was  at  one  time  a  prominent  candidate  for 
the  professorship  of  astronomy  in  Edin 
burgh  University.  cc  Of  the  old  Greek 
books,"  said  Emerson,  "there  are  five 
which  we  cannot  spare :  Homer,  Herodotus, 
./Eschylus,  Plato,  and  Plutarch  " ;  but  really 
only  the  last  two  seem  to  have  been  among 


252     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

his  inseparable  friends.  There  is  no  writer 
of  whom  he  speaks  with  more  constant 
fondness  than  Plutarch.  No  other  Amer 
ican  has  written  of  Plutarch  so  well.  "  I 
must  think  we  are  more  deeply  indebted  to 
him  than  to  all  the  ancient  writers,"  he  says. 
"  I  do  not  know  where  to  find  a  book,  to 
borrow  a  phrase  of  Ben  Jonson's,  f  so 
rammed  with  life.' '  "  I  find  him  a  better 
teacher  of  rhetoric  than  any  modern.  His 
superstitions  are  poetic,  aspiring,  affirmative. 
A  poet  might  rhyme  all  day  with  hints 
drawn  from  Plutarch."  "  His  faith  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  is  another  measure 
of  his  deep  humanity.  .  .  .  He  believes  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Providence  and 
that  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  rest  on 
one  and  the  same  basis," — as  did  Emerson 
himself. 

Emerson  early  came  to  love  Plato,  and 
after  leaving  college  and  all  through  his 
life  studied  him  closely.  "  Plato,"  says  Dr. 
Holmes,  "comes  nearest  to  being  his  idol, 
Shakespeare  next."  "Out  of  Plato,"  he 
said,  "  came  all  things  that  are  still  written 
and  debated  among  men  of  thought.  The 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          253 

work  of  Plato  is  that  writing  which,  in  the 
history  of  civilization,  is  entitled  to  Omar's 
account  of  the  Koran,  when  he  said, f  Burn  the 
libraries  ;  for,  if  they  contain  anything  good, 
it  is  contained  in  this  book/  "  "Why,"  he 
asks,  "should  not  young  men  be  educated 
in  this  book  [Plato]  ?  It  would  suffice  for 
the  tuition  of  the  race  !  "  "  Read  Plato's 
(  Republic ' !  Read  Plato's  <  Republic ' ! 
Read  Plato's  c  Republic '  !  "  he  repeated  to 
one  young  man.  "He  lifts  man  toward  the 
divine,  and  I  like  it  when  I  hear  that  a  man 
reads  Plato.  I  want  to  meet  that  man " ; 
as  he  used  similarly  to  say  that  he  felt  like 
embracing  men  who  loved  Horace.  But 
"  Plato,"  wrote  Emerson  of  Carlyle  at 
Craigenputtock,  "  he  does  not  read,  and  he 
disparaged  Socrates."  Later,  however,  Car 
lyle  studied  Plato,  and  his  political  views 
were  directly  influenced  by  him.  "  I  re 
member  when  Emerson  first  came  to  see 
me,  that  he  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about 
Plato  that  was  very  attractive,  and  I  began 
to  look  up  Plato ;  but  amid  the  endless 
dialectical  hair-splitting  was  generally  com 
pelled  to  shut  up  the  book  and  say,  c  How 


254     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

does  all  this  concern  me  at  all  ? '  But  later 
on  I  have  read  Plato  with  much  pleasure, 
finding  him  an  elevated  soul,  spreading  a 
pure  atmosphere  around  one  as  he  reads  " ; 
and  then  he  proceeds  to  quote,  with  great 
relish,  Plato's  beratings  of  Cleon,  the  shoe 
maker,  for  meddling  with  politics,  and  the 
rest  of  his  scorn  of  the  Athenian  democracy. 
The  Neo-Platonists  were  always  favorites 
with  Emerson, —  Plotinus  and  the  rest ;  and 
he  was  a  great  reader  of  Swedenborg  and 
the  mystics.  He  placed  Swedenborg  among 
the  five  poets  whom  he  recognized  as  defy 
ing  the  powers  of  destruction, —  Homer, 
Dante,  Shakespeare,  Swedenborg,  and 
Goethe.  Of  Dante's  power  to  embody 
his  own  life  and  time  in  highest  poetry 
Emerson  wrote  the  most  striking  words 
which  have  been  written ;  but  his  general 
use  of  Dante  is  not  important  —  while 
Carlyle  spoke  the  first  adequate  word  of 
appreciation  of  Dante  in  modern  England. 
Emerson  specially  valued  the  bibles  of  the 
race  and  such  authors  as  Epictetus,  Thomas 
a  Kempis,  and  Pascal.  The  highest  class 
of  books,  he  said,  are  those  which  express 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  255 

the  moral  element;  the  next,  works  of 
the  imagination ;  and  the  next,  works  of 
science.  "  There  is  a  mental  power  and 
creation,"  he  says  in  one  place,  "  more  ex 
cellent  than  anything  which  is  commonly 
called  philosophy  and  literature."  The 
high  poets,  as  Homer,  Milton,  and  Shake 
speare,  "do  not  fully  content  us."  They 
"  do  not  offer  us  heavenly  bread  "  ;  and  the 
true  poetry  is  to  be  found  in  Zoroaster  and 
Plato,  Saint  John  and  Menu,  "  with  their 
moral  burdens."  Above  all  is  the  Bible, 
most  original  and  most  profound.  "  People 
imagine  that  the  place  which  the  Bible  holds 
in  the  world  it  owes  to  miracles.  It  owes 
it  simply  to  the  fact  that  it  came  out  of 
a  profounder  depth  of  thought  than  any 
other  book,  and  the  effect  must  be  pre 
cisely  proportionate."  "  Gibbon  fancied  that 
it  was  combinations  of  circumstances  that 
gave  Christianity  its  place  in  history ;  but 
in  nature  it  takes  an  ounce  to  balance  an 
ounce."  "  The  most  wonderful  words  I 
ever  heard  of  being  uttered  by  man,"  said 
Carlyle,  "  are  those  in  the  four  Evangelists, 
by  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Their  intellectual 


256     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

talent  is  hardly  inferior  to  their  moral." 
"Our  divinest  symbol,"  he  said,  "is  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  and  his  life  and  what  followed 
therefrom ;  higher  has  the  human  thought 
not  yet  reached."  Jesus,  said  Emerson, 
"  alone  in  all  history  estimated  the  greatness 
of  man." 

Both  men  were  lovers  of  history,  rever- 
encers,  with  all  that  was  prophetic  in  them, 
of  the  past  and  its  great  lessons.  Carlyle 
was  the  greatest  historian  in  the  England  of 
his  time.  He  wrote  wise  essays  upon  "  Biog 
raphy,"  "History,"  and  "History  Again," 
and  devoted  to  history  his  last  public 
utterance.  "  History  "  is  the  subject  of  the 
first  essay  in  Emerson's  first  series  of  es 
says  ;  and  the  first  word  sounds  his  key 
note  of  interpretation.  One  of  his  earliest 
and  most  important  lecture  courses  was  one 
—  twelve  lectures  —  upon  the  "Philosophy 
of  History."  He  had  the  highest  qualities 
of  the  historian.  Judge  Hoar's  tribute  to 
his  historical  address  on  Concord  as  "  the 
most  complete  and  exquisite  picture  of  the 
origin,  history,  and  peculiar  characteristics 
of  a  New  England  town  that  has  ever  been 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          257 

produced "  was  a  just  tribute.  There  are 
no  lines  which  throw  more  illuminating  light 
than  his  upon  e^ery  period  of  our  American 
history, —  the  Colonial  period,  the  period  of 
the  Revolution,  and  the  period  of  the  Anti- 
slavery  struggle  and  the  Civil  War. 

Both  men  were  students  of  the  individual. 
In  reading  history,  Emerson  said,  the  stu 
dent  is  to  "prefer  the  history  of  individ 
uals."  He  gives  lists  of  the  autobiographies 
and  table-talks  which  he  loves,  the  books 
which  bring  the  student  close  to  the  heart  of 
the  great  actors  of  a  period.  He  prized  the 
works  of  Ben  Jonson  as  "  a  sort  of  hoop  " 
to  bind  all  the  Elizabethan  men  together 
and  to  England.  Biography  is  the  only 
history,  Carlyle  said :  history  is  chiefly  the 
record  of  what  the  great  men  in  the  world 
have  done.  Emerson  was  not  a  hero-wor 
shipper  in  the  Carlylian  sense.  History 
is  all  in  me,  he  said, —  in  every  man.  The 
foundation  idea  of  his  interpretation  of  his 
tory  is  that  there  is  one  mind  common  to 
all  individual  men.  Carlyle  writes  of  Hero- 
worship,  Emerson  of  the  Uses  of  Great 
Men.  The  great  man  is  the  useful  man, 


258      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  greatest  man  the  best  servant.  "  Self- 
trust,"  he  said,  "  is  the  essence  of  heroism." 
"  That  which  takes  my  fancy  most  in  the 
heroic  class,"  he  says,  "is  the  good  humor 
and  hilarity  they  exhibit."  This  is  true  of 
some  of  the  heroic,  but  it  is  not  true  of 
others.  "  Times  of  heroism,"  as  he  recog 
nizes,  "are  generally  times  of  terror";  and 
the  hero  of  the  terror  must  be  sad  and 
stern.  "  Emerson's  ideal,"  says  John  Bur 
roughs,  "  is  always  the  scholar,  the  man  of 
books  and  ready  wit ;  Carlyle's  hero  is  a 
riding  or  striding  ruler  or  a  master  worker 
in  some  active  field."  Yet  we  criticise  these 
generalizations  almost  as  fast  as  we  make 
them,  and  file  the  crowding  exceptions. 
We  think  of  Carlyle's  tribute  to  the  literary 
life  as  the  most  fortunate  and  influential 
life,  in  his  essay  on  Voltaire ;  and  Emerson 
mentions  Napoleon,  generally  in  praise  of 
some  energetic  quality,  oftener  than  he 
mentions  anybody  else  save  Shakespeare, 
oftener  than  Plato,  Plutarch,  or  Goethe,  who 
stand  next  in  order.  It  is  illuminating  to 
compare  Emerson's  "  Representative  Men  " 
and  the  subjects  of  his  early  biographical 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  259 

lectures,  Michael  Angelo,  Milton,  Luther, 
George  Fox,  and  Edmund  Burke,  with  the 
men  whom  Carlyle  chooses  to  represent 
his  sundry  heroisms.  With  the  early  bi 
ographical  course  he  gave  an  introductory 
lecture  on  "The  Tests  of  Great  Men," 
corresponding  to  the  lecture  on  "  The 
Uses  of  Great  Men,"  which  introduced 
the  course  on  "  Representative  Men."  The 
two  write  often  of  the  same  men, — Napo 
leon,  Goethe,  Shakespeare, —  but  differently. 
Carlyle  is  always  the  advocate  or  prose 
cutor  ;  Emerson  is  judicial,  and  we  feel  a 
kind  of  finality  in  what  he  says.  Napo 
leon's  case  cannot  be  reopened.  There  is 
in  Emerson's  page  always  a  certain  spirit  of 
superiority  to  the  man  he  writes  of;  but  we 
find  that  this  is  born  of  his  identification  of 
himself  with  humanity,  his  taking  of  his 
reader  into  partnership,  and  the  judgment 
appears  no  more  his  than  ours  as  we  read. 
To  Carlyle  common  mankind  is  a  mere 
flock  of  sheep,  and  the  main  thing  is  to 
find  good  "bell-wethers"  for  the  "dull 
host."  To  Emerson  "  all  men  are  wise ; 
the  difference  is  in  art."  "  The  great  are 


260      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

our  better  selves,  ourselves  with  advan 
tages,"  the  men  who  are  able  to  express 
more  clearly  some  idea  which  others  also 
accept,  and  the  homage  paid  them  is 
"  anything  but  humiliation ;  it  is  men's  ex 
pression  of  their  hope  of  what  they  shall 
become  when  the  obstructions  of  their  mal 
formation  and  mal-education  shall  be  trained 
away." 

Right  here  is  the  ground  of  the  main 
differences  between  Carlyle  and  Emerson. 
Here  Carlyle  goes  to  despotism, —  a  despot 
ism,  albeit,  based  in  a  searching  radicalism 
and  rooted  in  most  human  sympathies,  a 
despotism  of  brains,  loving  the  people  and 
having  no  respect  for  the  "dignities  and  a' 
that,'*  a  despotism  a  thousand  times  more 
democratic  than  all  Whiggism, —  and  Em 
erson  is  the  stanch  republican.  No  one 
could  characterize  Carlyle's  politics  better 
than  Emerson  himself:  "Young  men,  es 
pecially  those  holding  liberal  opinions,  press 
to  see  him,  but  he  treats  them  with  con 
tempt  ;  they  profess  freedom,  and  he  stands 
for  slavery ;  they  praise  republics,  and  he 
likes  the  Russian  czar ;  they  admire  Cob- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  261 

den  and  free  trade,  and  he  is  a  protectionist 
in  political  economy;  they  praise  moral 
suasion,  he  goes  for  murder,  money,  capital 
punishment,  and  other  pretty  abominations 
of  English  law ;  they  wish  freedom  of  the 
press,  and  he  thinks  the  first  thing  he  would 
do,  if  he  got  into  Parliament,  would  be  to 
turn  out  the  reporters  and  stop  all  manner 
of  mischievous  speaking  to  Buncombe  and 
wind-bags ;  they  go  for  free  institutions,  for 
letting  things  alone,  and  only  giving  oppor 
tunity  and  motive  to  every  man,  he  for  a 
stringent  government,  that  shows  people 
what  they  must  do,  and  makes  them  do  it." 
Carlyle  really  never  thought  himself  out 
in  politics.  He  railed, —  and  that  is  easy, — 
and  he  had  plenty  to  rail  at:  the  faithful 
and  hopeful  democrat  is  as  conscious  as  he 
of  the  defects  of  democracy.  But  he  sug 
gested  no  method  by  which  his  benevolent 
despot  could  be  made  a  despot  in  this  mod 
ern  world,  or  kept  benevolent,  or  secured  a 
benevolent  successor;  and  he  would  have 
railed  at  any  method  which  any  man  had 
ventured  to  suggest.  Some  glimmering  of 
a  better  way  painfully  evolving  in  humanity 


262      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

he  curiously  confesses  to  Emerson  himself 
in  one  of  his  last  letters  (1871):  "In  my 
occasional  explosions  against  Anarchy,  and 
my  inextinguishable  hatred  of  //,  I  privately 
whisper  to  myself:  Could  any  Friedrich 
Wilhelm  now,  or  Friedrich,  or  most  per 
fect  Governor  you  could  hope  to  realize, 
guide  forward  what  is  America's  essential 
task  at  present  faster  or  more  completely 
than  '  Anarchic  America '  is  now  doing  ? 
Such  f  Anarchy '  has  a  great  deal  to  say  for 
itself."  * 

*"  Emerson's  high  and  transparent  sanity,  among  other  things, 
kept  him  in  line  with  the  ruling  tendencies  of  his  age,  and  his  teach 
ing  brings  all  the  aid  that  abstract  teaching  can  towards  the  solution 
of  the  moral  problems  of  modern  societies.  Carlyle  chose  to  fling 
himself  headlong  and  blindfold  athwart  the  great  currents  of  things, 
against  all  the  forces  and  elements  that  are  pushing  modern  societies 
forward.  Beginning  in  his  earlier  work  with  the  same  faith  as  Emer 
son  in  leading  instincts,  he  came  to  dream  that  the  only  leading  in 
stinct  worth  thinking  about  is  that  of  self-will,  mastery,  force  and 
violent  strength.  Emerson  was  for  basing  the  health  of  a  modern 
commonwealth  on  the  only  real  strength,  and  the  only  kind  of  force 
that  can  be  relied  upon,  namely,  the  honest,  manly,  simple  and 
emancipated  character  of  the  citizen.  This  gives  to  his  doctrine  a 
hold  and  a  prize  on  the  work  of  the  day,  and  makes  him  our  helper. 
Carlyle's  perverse  reaction  had  wrecked  and  stranded  him  when  the 
world  came  to  ask  him  for  direction.  In  spite  of  his  resplendent 
genius,  he  had  no  direction  to  give,  and  was  only  able  in  vague  and 
turbid  torrents  of  words  to  hide  a  shallow  and  obsolete  lesson." 
John  Morley. 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  263 

"  Emerson  told  me  once,"  says  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  "  that  when,  in  the  winter  of 
1848,  he  left  Liverpool  for  America,  Arthur 
Hugh  Clough,  the  young  poet,  accompanied 
him  to  the  ship,  and  walked  the  deck  with 
him  until  she  sailed.  Clough  was  sad  for 
his  departure.  He  said:  cYou  leave  all 
of  us  young  Englishmen  without  a  leader. 
Carlyle  has  led  us  into  the  desert,  and  he 
has  left  us  there/  Emerson  said  to  him, 
c  That  is  what  all  young  men  in  England 
have  said  to  me ' ;  and  he  placed  his  hand 
on  dough's  head,  and  said,  c  I  ordain  you 
Bishop  of  all  England,  to  go  up  and  down 
among  all  the  young  men,  and  lead  them 
into  the  promised  land/  Alas  !  "  comments 
Dr.  Hale,  "  Clough  was  not  one  of  the 
leaders  of  men :  rather  a  listener  and  a  fol 
lower.  And  the  young  men  of  England 
and  America  were  left  to  the  greater  lesson 
of  the  Master  of  Life, —  that  every  life  must 
for  itself  drink  from  the  infinite  Fountain. 
The  days  of  chieftains,  of  proconsuls,  of 
dukes  and  barons  are  gone  by  ;  the  day  of 
the  boss  and  the  magician  was  over  when 
the  Master  of  Life  spoke  the  Word.  The 


264      The   Influence  of  Emerson 

kingdom  of  heaven  is  open  to  each  man 
who  will  thunder  at  the  door.  The  king 
dom  of  heaven  suffers  violence ;  and  the 
sturdy  and  persevering,  and  only  they,  are 
those  who  take  it  by  force." 

Emerson  believed  in  the  people,  in  the 
present  and  in  progress.  Carlyle  painted 
the  tombs  of  the  prophets,  but  too  often 
stoned  the  prophets  sent  to  his  generation. 
He  would  very  likely  have  been  much  pes 
tered  by  Cromwell  and  his  Puritans  if  he 
had  lived  in  London  then ;  and  he  might 
have  told  Luther,  if  he  had  heard  his  ham 
mer  whacking  on  the  door  of  Wittenberg 
church,  amidst  the  rabblement,  that  he  had 
better  be  attending  to  "  the  duty  that  lay 
nearest  him."  He  failed  to  see  Mazzini's 
vision,  and  to  divine  that  he  had  the  truest 
political  prophet  of  the  age  to  his  neighbor, 
while  walking  in  and  out  with  him  every 
day.  Emerson  was  the  universal  man,  to 
whom  past  and  present,  history  and  the 
newspaper,  were  the  same.  "  'Tis  wonder 
ful,"  he  writes  in  1864,  "what  sublime  les 
sons  I  have  once  and  again  read  on  the  bul 
letin  boards  in  the  streets  !  "  His  perception 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  265 

of  the  good  was  immediate ;  and  he  knew 
John  Brown  for  a  hero  while  the  musketry 
was  rattling  at  Harper's  Ferry  as  truly  as 
the  men  of  Concord  Bridge  whose  shot  had 
been  heard  round  the  world  and  been  ap 
plauded  all  along  the  line.  Emerson  be 
lieved  in  America  and  the  republic,  in  its 
opportunity  and  power ;  and  we  go  to  him  to 
feed  our  patriotism.  "  To  him  more  than 
to  all  other  causes  together/'  Lowell  has 
said,  with  great  boldness,  perhaps,  and  think 
ing  of  the  Harvard  heroes,  "  did  the  young 
martyrs  of  our  civil  war  owe  the  sustaining 
strength  of  thoughtful  heroism  that  is  so 
touching  in  every  record  of  their  lives." 
Yet  we  must  remember  that,  if  Carlyle's 
pages  are  not  calculated  to  stir  the  patriotism 
of  Englishmen,  there  was  little  that  was 
admirable  in  the  social  and  political  condi 
tions  of  the  England  to  which  it  was  his 
lot  to  address  himself.  We  do  not  go  to 
Emerson's  addresses  on  slavery  to  warm  our 
love  of  country  ;  and  had  Emerson  been 
born,  like  Carlyle,  into  the  midst  of  the 
Cl  morgue  of  aristocracy,"  his  speech  there 
would  often  have  taken  the  form  of  a  Lat 
ter-day  Pamphlet. 


266      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Here,  too,  in  this  root  view  of  human 
nature,  is  the  ground  of  such  pessimism  as 
there  is  in  Carlyle  and  of  Emerson's  com 
plete  optimism.  There  is  none  of  Carlyle's 
despair  in  Emerson.  All  evil  is  to  him  a 
temporary  lack  of  harmony ;  and  there  is 
always  at  work  in  the  affairs  of  the  world 
a  power  which  compels  men  to  be  just,  so 
that  what  is  useful  and  right  will  last,  and 
what  is  bad  and  hurtful  will  sink.  There 
is  a  law  always  working  to  make  the  best 
better  and  the  worst  good.  Moral  deformity 
itself  is  good  passion  out  of  place.  "  Nature 
is  upheld  by  antagonism.  Passions,  resist 
ance,  danger,  are  educators.  We  acquire 
the  strength  we  have  overcome."  Law  is 
the  highest  method  of  freedom.  No  evil 
ever  escapes  unpunished.  Crime  and  pun 
ishment  grow  out  of  one  stem  ;  but  all  work 
together  for  the  universal  good.  This  faith 
in  the  universal  good  grew  with  Emerson  as 
he  grew  older ;  and  hence  the  ever-deepen 
ing  serenity  and  trust  which  made  his  last 
days  best.  It  was  the  faith  in  Providence. 
"  I  have  heard  prayers," —  he  asked  his 
readers  in  the  cc  Sovereignty  of  Ethics,"  his 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  267 

last  great  religious  utterance,  whether  they 
had  never  had  occasion  to  say  this  to  them 
selves, —  "  I  have  prayed,  even  ;  but  I  have 
never  until  now  dreamed  that  this  undertak 
ing  the  entire  management  of  my  own  affairs 
was  not  commendable.  I  have  never  seen, 
until  now,  that  it  dwarfed  me.  I  have  not 
discovered,  until  this  blessed  ray  flashed  just 
now  through  my  soul,  that  there  dwelt  any 
power  in  nature  that  would  relieve  me  of  my 
load.  But  now  I  see."  It  is  in  the  persist 
ent,  consistent  faith  in  the  soul,  in  man,  in 
progress,  and  in  the  reliable  omnipotence 
of  the  good,  that  Emerson's  superiority  to 
Carlyle  consists.  This  is  the  faith  that  sus 
tains  and  inspires,  and  this  alone  that  can 
do  it  constantly. 

It  is  bad  to  be  with  Carlyle  habitually. 
It  is  bad  not  to  have  Emerson  always  on 
the  table.  He  is  a  civilizer.  His  reverence 
for  man  as  man  begat  the  gentlest  manners 
and  the  most  delicate  deference  to  all.  He 
rebukes  our  rudeness,  hurry,  and  self-asser 
tion  by  the  mere  thought  of  him,  while 
Carlyle  often  feeds  them.  "  He  is  a  born 
gentleman,"  said  Frederika  Bremer.  He 


268     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

was  the  perfect  gentleman  for  the  same 
reason  that  he  was  the  perfect  republican. 
We  should  laugh  at  an  essay  from  Carlyle 
on  Manners,  kind  as  that  great  heart  was 
in  its  innermost,  and  fine  his  courtesy  when 
he  bethought  himself.  He  was  boisterous, 
obtrusive  often  and  rude,  breaking  every 
rule  of  etiquette,  perhaps,  every  twenty- 
four  hours.  He  was  forgetful  of  others, 
careless  too  often,  if  comfortable  himself, 
whether  others  were  comfortable  or  no, 
careless  how  much  he  might  disturb  the 
peace  and  happiness  of  others  by  the  vain 
and  ineffectual  ventilation  of  his  own  mis 
eries.  He  was  doubtless  an  uncomfortable 
man  to  live  with,  much  of  the  time  ;  and 
the  loneliness  and  hardships  to  which  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  subjected  during  those  long 
years  at  Craigenputtock,  with  the  pans  and 
kettles,  and  with  no  "immensities"  or  "eter 
nities  "  of  her  own,  to  speak  of,  to  cheer  her 
up,  were  certainly  severe.  Thoughtlessness  ? 
Yes  ;  but  it  was  mournful  thoughtlessness, 
and  perhaps  the  remorse  of  "  Reminiscen 
ces  "  was  scarcely  too  severe  an  atonement 
for  this  and  some  of  the  London  matters, — 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  269 

although  too  much  has  been  heard  of  all 
this,  and  the  gossip  has  done  gross  wrong  to 
Carlyle  and  to  the  truth. 

Emerson  was  by  far  the  rounder  man, 
more-sided.  A  many-sided  man  it  is  not 
just  to  call  Carlyle.  Of  prodigious  knowl 
edge,  writing  on  many  subjects,  these  are 
chiefly  in  a  few  directions,  circling  round 
and  illustrating  a  few  great  ideas.  Man,  in 
his  history  and  destiny  and  literature,  was 
what  exclusively  held  Carlyle' s  attention  ; 
and  history  and  society  he  approached  with 
serious  limitations.  That  quick  and  loving 
interest  in  nature  which  breathes  in  all  of 
Emerson's  pages,  and  of  which  his  poetry 
especially  is  so  largely  an  expression,  we  look 
for  in  vain  in  Carlyle.  Nor  was  his  interest 
in  Art  greater.  Such  interest  as  appears  is 
the  interest  rather  of  the  student  of  history, 
who  must  take  account  of  art  as  of  politics 
or  of  pauperism.  "  I  was  at  the  Museum 
a  week  ago  seeking  pictures  [for  the  French 
Revolution]  ;  found  none  ;  but  got  a  sight  of 
Albert  Diirer  and  (I  find)  some  shadow  of 
his  old  teutschen,  deep,  still  soul,  which  was 
well  worth  the  getting."  It  is  an  interest  in 


270      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  man,  not  the  artist, —  as  he  was  interested 
in  portraits  of  John  Knox.  He  would 
probably  have  been  equally  interested  in  one 
of  Holbein's  Henries  and  in  the  Mona  Lisa. 
We  should  like  to  know  what  he  was  chiefly 
thinking  about  as  he  wandered  with  Emer 
son,  on  that  Stonehenge  day,  through  Wilton 
Hall,  among  the  pictures  and  the  statues, 
"  to  which  Carlyle,  catalogue  in  hand,  did  all 
too  much  justice."  He  should  have  been 
interested  in  art,  if  only  to  have  written 
adequately  on  the  man,  Michael  Angelo. 
There  is  nothing  that  he  did  not  give  us 
which  we  should  have  liked  so  well,  unless 
it  be  the  Life  of  Luther.  In  Emerson's 
study  there  was  only  one  large  picture,  a 
copy  of  Michael  Angelo's  "  Fates."  We 
should  have  looked  for  this  with  Carlyle, 
perhaps,  and  here  rather  for  the  "Trans 
figuration  "  or  the  Parthenon.  But  do  not 
we  see  on  second  thought  that  it  was  in  its 
proper  home,  and  that  its  prominence  was 
proper  ?  "  The  moral  sentiment  in  us  is 
inspiration ;  out  there  in  Nature  we  see  its 
fatal  strength.  .  .  .  The  dice  are  loaded ;  the 
globe  is  a  battery,  because  every  atom  is  a 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  271 

magnet ;  and  the  police  and  sincerity  of  the 
universe  are  secured  by  God's  delegating 
his  divinity  to  every  particle ;  there  is  no 
room  for  hypocrisy,  no  margin  for  choice. 
.  .  .  The  book  of  Nature  is  the  book  of 
Fate.  ...  If  we  give  it  the  high  sense  in 
which  the  poets  used  it,  even  thought  itself 
is  not  above  Fate ;  that,  too,  must  act  ac 
cording  to  eternal  laws."  Emerson  would 
have  been  most  likely  to  have  given  us  the 
adequate  essay  on  "  the  hand  that  rounded 
Peter's  dome," —  as  that  hand,  writing  upon 
Fate,  would  have  fixed  its  relation  to  free 
dom  just  as  Emerson  fixed  it.  Indeed, 
Emerson  did  lecture  upon  Michael  Angelo, 
—  it  was,  I  think,  the  first  biographical 
lecture  he  ever  gave.  In  inculcating  self- 
reliance,  he  appeals  to  Michael  Angelo's 
course, —  "  to  confide  in  one's  self  and  be 
something  of  worth  and  value  "  ;  and  both 
in  prose  and  verse  he  celebrates  his  divine 
inspiration :  "  Michael  Angelo  is  largely 
filled  with  the  Creator  that  made  and  makes 
men."  "  Himself  from  God  he  could  not 
free."  "It  is  almost  a  test  by  which  the 
finest  people  I  have  ever  known  might  be 


272      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

selected,"  he  writes  to  Herman  Grimm, — 
"  their  interest  in  Michael  Angelo  and  his 
friends,  Vittoria  Colonna  in  chief."  He 
corresponds  enthusiastically  with  Margaret 
Fuller  about  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael. 
The  Boston  Athenaeum  —  "on  whose  sunny 
roof  and  beautiful  chambers,"  writes  Emer 
son,  cc  may  the  benediction  of  centuries  of 
students  rest  with  mine  " —  had  then  just 
added  to  its  library  a  small  collection  of 
plaster  casts,  Michael  Angelo's  "  Day  "  and 
"  Night "  among  them,  and  a  good  number 
of  engravings  of  the  works  of  the  French 
and  Italian  masters.  "  Here  was  old  Greece 
and  old  Italy  brought  bodily  to  New  Eng 
land,  and  a  verification  given  to  all  our 
dreams  and  readings."  But  Emerson  has 
not  written  so  wisely  or  with  so  much  in 
spiration  on  painting  and  sculpture  as  on 
poetry :  we  could  wish  that,  when  embalm 
ing  Guercino  in  song,  he  had  written  another 
name  instead,  and  such  like ;  yet  upon  the 
general  principles  of  all  true  art  what  other 
American  has  written  essays  comparable  in 
luminousness  and  stimulation  with  his  ? 
Carlyle  doubted  whether  Art,  in  the  old 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          273 

Greek  and  Italian  sense,  were  possible  for 
men  in  this  era.  "  Were  not  perhaps  the 
founder  of  a  religion  our  true  Homer  at 
present  ?  "  he  asked.  "  The  whole  soul 
must  be  illuminated,  made  harmonious/' 
"  I  will  try  for  Winckelmann,"  he  said 
again ;  "  but  in  my  heterodox  heart  there 
is  yearly  growing  up  the  strangest,  crabbed, 
one-sided  persuasion,  that  art  is  but  a  remi 
niscence  now :  that  for  us  in  these  days 
prophecy  (well  understood),  not  poetry,  is 
the  thing  wanted.  How  can  we  sing  and 
paint  when  we  do  not  yet  believe  and  see  ?  " 
There  is  deep  truth  here.  Art  in  the  an 
tique  sense  has  seemed  almost  impossible  in 
this  age.  There  is  little  which  the  sculptors 
or  the  painters  have  done  in  these  days  in 
England  or  America  which  really  expresses 
the  earnest  or  actual  mind  of  the  time,  or 
will  ever  be  hunted  up  as  evidence.  Pictures 
of  buttercups  and  sunsets  and  the  full  moon 
cannot  do  it,  although  the  love  of  nature  is 
perennially  welcome  in  painting,  as  in  poetry  ; 
nor  the  yards  of  battles  with  which  Berlin 
hangs  its  walls,  and  with  which  —  records  of 
reaction,  obscuration,  and  anachronism  — 


274     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

New  York  and  London  may  hang  theirs  to 
morrow  ;  nor  portraits  of  the  dangerous  little 
idle  classes,  manikins  to  carry  silk  and 
velvet  that  will  stand  the  microscope.  The 
art  clubs  have  seemed  fated  to  be  dilettant, 
seemed  rather  suffocating  places,  which 
should  be  scented  with  jockey  club  and  fur 
nished  carefully  with  chaste  correctness, 
though  with  stuffed  chairs.  Their  air  has 
been  as  impossible  for  the  people  to  breathe 
as  the  air  of  a  Fifth  Avenue  church  ;  and 
the  people  have  not  breathed  it, —  only  the 
indulged  and  fortunate  have  breathed  it. 
Our  art  has  not  been  for  the  people :  our 
paintings  have  not  been  published,  like  our 
books,  but  parlored,  and  so  calculated  for 
the  parlor.  Not  appealing  and  not  able  to 
appeal  to  the  people,  it  has  not  reflected  the 
people's  life  nor  had  roots  in  it.  New  Eng 
land  sent  a  roomful  of  pictures  to  represent 
her  at  the  World's  Fair.  They  did  not 
represent  her:  no  visitor  could  have  told 
whether  they  came  from  Boston  or  Brittany. 
The  student  of  New  England  by  and  by  will 
turn  back  to  the  stories  of  Mrs.  Stowe  and 
Mrs.  Cooke  and  Miss  Wilkins  and  Miss 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          275 

Jewett,  to  Sumner's  orations  and  Parker's 
sermons,  to  the  "  Biglow  Papers "  and 
Whittier's  ballads  and  Emerson, —  but  not 
to  the  painters ;  for  there  is  nothing  indige 
nous  and  authentic  there,  nothing  reporting 
life.  Boston  —  the  Puritan  capital,  the 
cradle  of  liberty,  the  freer  of  slaves,  the 
home  of  historians,  the  centre  of  our  golden 
age  of  poetry  and  letters  — rears  her  temple 
of  culture ;  and  no  canvas  or  marble  on  the 
walls  to  show  that  the  foundations  are  not  in 
Birmingham  or  Bordeaux  or  Bologna.  It 
is  not  an  answer  to  say  that  culture  tran 
scends  patriotism  and  provincialism  :  a  great 
civic  life  is  not  a  provincialism,  and  the 
inspirations  of  the  nation  are  a  cardinal 
factor  in  all  vital  education  and  public  expe 
rience.  The  answer  is  that  art  with  us  is 
still  exotic  —  as  likewise  in  Carlyle's  Eng 
land  and  Scotland.  It  was  not  so  in  Nu 
remberg  and  Venice  and  Florence  and 
Athens.  The  painter  and  the  sculptor  told 
of  life,  of  what  was  in  the  popular  heart. 
Their  work  was  as  public  as  that  of  the 
tragedians  and  the  orators,  and  profited  like 
theirs  from  the  public  stricture  and  the  pub- 


276     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

lie  praise ;  and  so  they,  too,  are  among 
the  historians, —  exponents  and  chroniclers 
of  the  times.  The  fault  is  not  with  our 
artists  ;  the  fault  is  with  ourselves.  Carlyle 
was  right.  The  problem  of  art  is  the  prob 
lem  of  social  regeneration.  When  our  so 
ciety  believes  and  sees,  then  the  artist  will 
match  the  new  life  with  his  larger  and  braver 
work.  That  the  braver  and  larger  works 
have  multiplied  in  England  and  America; 
that  the  public  opportunity  and  craving  come; 
that,  even  as  Carlyle  wrote,  Ruskin,  his  own 
disciple,  wrote  also;  that  William  Morris  has 
lived  and  lives, —  these  are  encouragements 
and  warrants  for  the  faith  that  broader  and 
better  social  visions  and  ideals  are  multiply 
ing,  too. 

Carlyle  doubted  whether  Poetry  itself  is 
sincere  in  these  days,  and  he  inveighed 
against  it  in  many  of  his  friends.  He 
inveighed  against  it  in  Emerson  himself, 
and  clearly  never  had  any  true  apprecia 
tion  of  the  beauty  and  worth  of  Emerson's 
poetry.  "  I  did  gain,  though  under  impedi 
ments,  a  real  satisfaction,  and  some  tone  of 
the  Eternal  Melodies  sounding  afar  off.  .  .  . 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          277 

But  indeed  you  are  very  perverse."  Really 
he  pities  Emerson,  and  scorns  him  a  little, 
for  wasting  his  time  on  poetry.  Yet  he  was 
himself  truly  a  poet, —  "  with  the  gift  of 
song,"  says  Mr.  Lowell,  "he  would  have 
been  the  greatest  of  epic  poets  since  Homer"; 
and  the  subjects  of  his  great  "  Cromwell  "  and 
"  French  Revolution  "  epics  have  as  central 
place  in  the  history  of  the  modern  world 
as  the  siege  of  Troy  had  to  the  Greeks. 
Curiously  enough,  we  find  him  asking  in  his 
journal,  many  years  before  he  went  to  Lon 
don  :  "  Were  the  true  history  (had  we  any 
such,  or  even  generally  any  dream  of  such) 
the  true  epic  poem  ?  I  partly  begin  to  sur 
mise  so."  And,  while  he  is  beginning  at 
"  The  French  Revolution,"  he  writes, 
"  Gleams,  too,  of  a  work  of  art  hover 
past  me, —  as  if  this  should  be  a  work  of 
art."  Writing  to  Emerson  himself  at  this 
time,  he  said  that  "  it  was  part  of  his  creed 
that  history  is  poetry,  could  we  tell  it 
right," — which  is  true,  as  Emerson's  cor 
relative,  that  "  our  best  history  is  still 
poetry,"  is  true  also,  and  more  obviously 
and  immediately  true.  The  structural  feel- 


278      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

ing  was  always  powerful  in  Carlyle ;  and 
"Past  and  Present,"  "  Sartor/ '  and  the 
greater  essays,  no  less  than  "  The  French 
Revolution,"  which  is  indeed  a  work  of 
art,  are  carefully  proportioned,  and  every 
member  has  its  proper  place.  An  essay  of 
Carlyle's  always  remains  a  moving  picture  in 
the  mind,  while  Emerson's  essays,  perfect 
in  each  sentence,  have  to  most  neither 
beginning,  end,  nor  middle.  Like  "  a  bag 
of  duck  shot  "  we  have  noticed  that  Carlyle 
called  them ;  and  he  somewhere  spoke  of 
them  as  like  an  army  all  made  up  of  gen 
erals  or  captains.  Emerson  himself  defended 
this  lack  of  scheme  in  writing ;  and  the  way 
in  which  his  lectures  and  essays  grew  and 
were  put  together  has  often  been  described. 
"  You  should  start  with  no  skeleton  or 
plan,"  he  said  to  the  Williams  student. 
"  The  natural  one  will  grow  as  you  work. 
Knock  away  all  scaffolding.  Neither  have 
exordium  nor  peroration."  Yet  in  another 
mood,  clearly  in  self-criticism,  he  writes : 
"  If  Minerva  offered  me  a  gift  and  an 
option,  I  would  say,  Give  me  continuity.  I 
am  tired  of  scraps."  In  truth,  the  essays 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  279 

differ  much  in  degree  of  method  and 
system,  and  most  of  them  are  far  more 
logical  in  their  arrangement  than  it  is  fash 
ionable  for  folk  who  do  not  closely  study 
them  to  say.  Dr.  Harris  has  published  a 
careful  analysis  of  "  Experience,"  to  show 
how  much  can  be  said  for  its  logical  and 
orderly  process.  That  essay  is  but  a  frag 
ment,  and  there  are  others  where  the  ana 
lyst  would  fare  worse  ;  but  there  are  also  oth 
ers  where  he  would  fare  quite  as  well.  Mr. 
Chadwick  has  pointed  out  the  peculiarly 
beautiful  development  and  order  of  the 
Harvard  address,  which  is  perhaps  cast  more 
completely  in  one  mould  than  any  other 
single  lecture  or  essay.  It  is  only  as  we  live 
long  with  Emerson  that  we  see  his  funda 
mental  logic  and  consistency,  below  all  sur 
face  varieties,  in  his  pervading  and  control 
ling  ideas.  "  I  am  not  careful,"  he  says  him 
self,  in  serene  trust  in  the  deep  logic  of  his 
life,  "  to  see  how  my  thoughts  comport  with 
other  thoughts  and  other  moods, —  I  trust 
them  for  that, —  any  more  than  how  any  one 
minute  of  the  year  is  related  to  any  other 
remote  minute, —  which  yet  I  know  is  so 


280     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

related."  He  is  logical  as  the  landscape  is 
logical,  consistent  as  the  earth  is  consistent, 
in  whose  common  soil  are  rooted,  asking 
no  consent  of  each  other,  the  lily  and  the 
rose,  the  oak-tree  and  the  pine,  and  herbs 
great  and  small,  wherein  birds  of  a  hun 
dred  species  nest  and  sing. 

Emerson  is  much  more  the  poet  than 
Carlyle,  perhaps  all  poet,  in  essays  and  in 
verse  alike.  "  I  am  born  a  poet,''  he 
wrote  to  Miss  Jackson,  adding  in  humil 
ity,  "  of  a  low  class  without  doubt,  yet  a 
poet :  that  is  my  nature  and  vocation " ; 
and  to  Miss  Peabody  he  said  the  same  : 
"  I  am  not  a  great  poet,  but  whatever  is  of 
me  is  a  poet."  Parker  said,  using  almost 
Lowell's  words  upon  Carlyle,  that  Emerson 
is  a  poet  lacking  the  accomplishment  of 
verse ;  and  he  made  merry  with  Emerson's 
rhymes.  But  this  is  shallow,  as  most  criti 
cism  like  Arnold's  on  Emerson's  poetry  is 
shallow.  In  every  seeming  awkwardness 
we  grow  to  find  a  wondrous  strength  and 
a  wondrous  fitness,  and  should  shrink  from 
a  word  that  was  simply  of  correcter  length. 
Poets  know  poets ;  and  every  one  of  our 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  281 

greater  American  poets  has  borne  witness  to 
Emerson  as  the  greatest  of  their  company. 
Holmes  and  Stedman  have  made  the  argu 
ment.  Howells  has  said  that  Emerson,  more 
perhaps  than  any  other  modern  poet,  gives 
the  notion  of  inspiration ;  and  truly,  if  any 
thing  in  poetry  ever  rolled  out  of  the  heart 
of  nature,  thence  came  "  The  Problem," 
"Woodnotes,"  and  "Each  and  All."  No 
other  American  poetry  teaches  truth  so 
profound  as  Emerson's.  No  poems  —  not 
Wordsworth's  —  have  ever  taken  us  so  to 
the  deep  secrets  of  the  woods  and  earth  and 
sky  as  Emerson's  poems  of  nature.  None 
either  are  in  so  profound  harmony  with  the 
modern  philosophy  of  nature  or  have  given 
it  such  fitting  and  synthetic  voice.  Carlyle 
was  in  small  sympathy  with  modern  science, 
—  coupled  Darwinism  with  atheism ;  but 
Emerson's  genius  anticipated  and  calmly 
mastered  all.  "In  him,"  says  Tyndall, 
"  we  have  a  poet  and  a  profoundly  relig 
ious  man,  who  is  really  and  entirely  un 
daunted  by  the  discoveries  of  science, 
past,  present  and  prospective.  In  his  case, 
poetry,  with  the  joy  of  a  bacchanal,  takes  her 


282      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

graver  brother,  science,  by  the  hand,  and 
cheers  him  with  immortal  laughter.  By 
Emerson  scientific  conceptions  are  con 
tinually  transmuted  into  the  finer  forms 
and  warmer  lines  of  an  ideal  world." 

Emerson  is  always  definite  and  clear, — 
Hellenic ;  Carlyle  is  Hebraic,  turgid  and 
often  ambiguous, —  and  there  are  Carlylians 
of  the  right  and  left  wings  and  centre.  The 
difference  between  the  men  is  the  difference 
—  to  use  words,  otherwise  applied,  of  Emer 
son's  own  —  between  serene  sunshine  and 
lurid  stormlights.  Yet  deeper  than  all  dif 
ferences,  as  both  knew  well,  are  the  like 
nesses.  Lowell  speaks,  in  the  "  Fable  for 
Critics,"  of  the 

.  .  .  "  persons,  mole-blind  to  the  soul's  make  and 

style, 
Who  insist  on  a  likeness  'twixt  E.  and  Carlyle." 

But  Lowell  said  many  things  in  the 
"  Fable  for  Critics  "  more  smart  than  true, 
as  he  would  doubtless  be  quickest  to  own, — 
not  careful  to  trim  the  sentiment  to  a  nicety, 
if  the  words  jingled  well.  The  likeness  be 
tween  Emerson  and  Carlyle  was  profound, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          283 

extending  to  the  root  conceptions  and  pur 
poses  of  life,  while  the  diversities  were  much 
more  superficial.  "  Their  effects  upon  the 
mind,"  says  John  Burroughs,  with  a  high 
degree  of  truth,  "  are  essentially  the  same ; 
both  have  the  c  tart  cathartic  virtue '  of 
courage  and  self-reliance ;  both  nourish  char 
acter  and  spur  genius.  Carlyle  does  not 
communicate  the  gloom  he  feels ;  'tis  the 
most  tonic  despair  to  be  found  in  literature." 
Yet  there  were  never  more  striking  differ 
ences  between  two  men,  and  some  of  these 
are  touched  with  acute  discrimination  in 
Lowell's  familiar  lines.* 

*  The  books  abound  with  parallelisms  bringing  out  the  likenesses 
and  contrasts  between  the  two;  and  the  deductions  and  additions  to 
which  each  of  us  is  impelled  in  every  case  witness  to  the  vitality  and 
various  impressive  aspects  of  their  thought.  Says  Whipple,  in  his 
essay  on  "Emerson  and  Carlyle,"  one  of  his  three  valuable  essays 
relating  to  Emerson:  "Emerson  was  the  champion  of  the  Ideal;  Car 
lyle  asserted  the  absolute  dominion  of  fact.  Emerson  declared  that 
Truth  is  mighty,  and  will  prevail ;  Carlyle  retorted  that  truth  is  mighty, 
and  has  prevailed.  Emerson  looked  serenely  at  the  ugly  aspect  of 
contemporary  life,  because,  as  an  optimist,  he  was  a  herald  of  the 
Future;  Carlyle,  as  a  pessimist,  denounced  the  Present,  and  threw  all 
the  energy  of  his  vivid  dramatic  genius  into  vitalizing  the  Past.  Emer 
son  was  a  prophet ;  Carlyle,  a  resurrectionist.  Emerson  gloried  in  what 
was  to  be ;  Carlyle  exulted  in  what  had  been.  Emerson  declared,  even 
when  current  events  appeared  ugliest  to  the  philanthropist,  that  '  the 
highest  thought  and  the  deepest  love  is  born  with  victory  on  his  head,' 


284     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

Emerson  is  "  sweetness  and  light  "  become 
flesh  and  dwelling  among  us.  "  What  can 
you  say  of  Carlyle,"  said  Ruskin,  "  but  that 
he  was  born  in  the  clouds  and  struck  by 
lightning  ?  "  Carlyle  is  sometimes  half  mad 
man  ;  Emerson  is  always  sane  and  sanity- 
strengthening.  Carlyle  was  Essene,  and 
Emerson  was  Stoic ;  but  the  Stoic  loved 
Hymettus  and  Ilissus  better  than  the  Porch, 
and  the  Essene  loved  Jerusalem  more  than 
Jordan.  Carlyle  was  in  many  ways  least 
human,  and  yet  needed  men  the  most,  was 
most  dependent  on  society  and  books,  had 
least  resources  in  himself.  Both  were  hu 
morists.  Emerson,  with  his  Yankee  shrewd 
ness,  laughed  quietly  to  himself  at  Brook 
Farm,  religiously  as  he  respected  it,  and  in 
secret  moods,  doubtless,  enjoyed  as  much  as 
Hawthorne  the  succotash  of  philosopher 

and  must  triumph  in  the  end;  Carlyle,  gloomily  surveying  the  pres 
ent,  insisted  that  high  thought  and  deep  love  must  be  sought  and 
found  in  generations  long  past,  which  Dr.  Dryasdust  had  so  covered  up 
with  his  mountains  of  mud  that  it  was  only  by  immense  toil  that  he 
[Carlyle]  had  been  able  to  reproduce  them  as  they  actually  existed. 
Look  up,  says  Emerson,  cheerily;  '  hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star';  look 
down,  growls  Carlyle,  *  and  see  that  your  wagon  is  an  honest  one, 
safe  and  strong  in  passing  over  miry  roads,  before  you  have  the  impu 
dence  to  look  up  to  the  smallest  star  in  the  rebuking  heavens.' " 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  285 

and  cabbage  and  Margaret  Fuller's  "  tran 
scendental  heifer " ;  and  Carlyle's  sense  of 
the  ridiculous  always  saved  him  from  the 
final  catastrophe,  made  his  prophesying  so 
much  the  better,  and,  by  setting  him  outside 
himself,  enabled  him  to  become  the  artist, 
too.  Both  were  great  conversationalists. 
"  Thomas  Carlyle,"  said  Emerson,  "  is  even 
more  extraordinary  in  his  conversation  than 
in  his  writing."  "  Emerson's  conversation," 
says  Mr.  Con  way,  "was  unequalled  by  that 
of  any  person  I  have  ever  met  with,  unless  it 
be  Thomas  Carlyle."  But  Emerson  needed 
the  stimulus  of  sympathetic  minds  to  draw 
him  out,  and  was  more  ready  to  listen  than 
to  speak  ;  while  Carlyle  was  a  haranguer,  like 
Coleridge,  whom  he  ridiculed.  "  You  can 
not  interrupt  him,"  Margaret  Fuller  found. 
"If  you  get  a  chance  to  remonstrate  for  a 
moment,  he  raises  his  voice  and  bears  you 
down," — which  to  Margaret  Fuller  must 
certainly  have  been  severe.  Both  men  were, 
by  training  and  nature,  scholars,  loving  quiet 
and  not  noise,  yet  both  compelled  by  the 
needs  of  the  time  to  enter  the  social  arena 
and  become  leaders  of  reform.  "  Carlyle 


286      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

thinks  it  the  only  question  for  wise  men/' 
wrote  Emerson,  "  instead  of  art,  and  fine 
fancies,  and  poetry,  and  such  things,  to  ad 
dress  themselves  to  the  problem  of  society"; 
and  Emerson's  own  lyre  was  hung  up,  when 
the  national  sin  became  rampant,  until  the 
nation's  life  was  purified. 

It  is  foolish  almost  to  ask  which  was 
the  greater  man,  Carlyle  or  Emerson, 
and  whose  influence  will  endure  the  longer. 
It  was  an  Englishman,  Matthew  Arnold, 
who  said  categorically,  "  Emerson's  work  is 
more  important  than  Carlyle's."  It  was  an 
Englishwoman,  George  Eliot,  who  said,  "  I 
have  seen  Emerson,  the  first  man  I  have 
seen."  She  also  said,  as  she  read  the  warm 
words  which  Carlyle  had  written  concerning 
Emerson,  "  This  is  a  world  worth  abiding  in 
while  one  man  can  thus  venerate  and  love 
another."  Carlyle  was  in  many  ways  the 
more  remarkable  personality,  made  the 
greater  sensation  in  the  world.  The  im 
pression  which  he  made  upon  his  time  was 
probably  deeper,  as  the  effects  of  the  great 
Mississippi  flood  upon  the  Louisiana  low 
lands  were  greater  than  the  effects  of  the 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  287 

showers  of  a  hundred  Aprils,  and  will  be 
talked  of  more  by  the  next  generation  and 
the  next.  No  such  flood  of  reminiscences 
followed  the  death  of  Emerson  as  followed 
the  death  of  Carlyle ;  and  fifty  years  from 
now  Carlyle  perhaps  will  be  read  the  more. 
He  will  have  revivals, —  look  out  for  one 
about  this  time, —  and  he  will  have  eclipses. 
Emerson  will  have  no  eclipses :  he  shines 
with  a  steady  light.  Like  Plato,  he  will 
have  his  dozen  readers  through  the  ages; 
and  for  them  his  book  will  ever  live,  and 
they  will  be  the  teachers  of  the  teachers. 

The  great  work  which  Carlyle  and  Emer 
son  did  for  their  time,  various  as  were  the 
ways  in  which  they  did  it,  was  essentially 
the  same.  It  was  not  the  literary  work,  for 
literary  ends, —  poetry,  history,  essays  on 
Goethe  and  Napoleon  and  Montaigne.  It 
was  the  work  of  social  and  spiritual  renova 
tion.  It  is  as  awakeners  and  inspirers,  as 
preachers  of  self-reliance  and  individualism 
against  the  compliance,  superstitions,  grega- 
riousness  and  sham  that  were  rusting  out 
the  world,  as  prophets  of  the  soul,  eternity, 
and  God,  the  universal  miracle,  against 


288      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

agnosticism,  mechanical  philosophy,  and  a 
utilitarian  morality,  that  they  will  be  chiefly 
remembered,  and  that,  being  dead,  they 
speak.  They  were  the  great  prophets  for 
England  and  America  of  the  new  idealistic 
epoch  in  the  world's  thought  and  life  in 
which  we  stand  and  which  began  with  Kant 
in  Germany.  Philosopher  in  the  pedant's 
or  precisian's  sense  —  system-maker,  cos 
mic  pigeon-holer  —  neither  Carlyle  nor 
Emerson  was,  unless,  indeed,  Emerson,  by 
virtue  of  the  "  Nature  "  essay  and  the  lect 
ures  on  the  "Intellect,"  as  "systematic" 
surely  as  Plato,  may  have  earned  that  dis 
tinction.  Philosophers  in  the  true  and 
antique  sense,  lovers  of  the  high  wisdom 
and  teachers  of  first  principles  to  men,  they 
were  the  greatest  in  the  England  and  Amer 
ica  of  their  time. 

"Carlyle,"  says  Mr.  Froude,  "was  a  Cal- 
vinist  without  the  theology," — the  Calvinis- 
tic  theology.  "  Emerson,"  says  Mr.  Cooke, 
"  was  a  Puritan,  with  all  that  is  harsh,  re 
pulsive  and  uncomfortable  in  Puritanism 
removed."  They  were  the  Puritans  of  this 
time,  the  pure  men  and  sincere.  They 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  289 

threw  man  back  on  himself  and  God  once 
more,  instead  of  on  the  congregation  and 
tradition.  "  I  cannot  find  language  of  suf 
ficient  energy,"  said  Emerson,  "to  convey 
my  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  private  integ 
rity."  "The  priest  of  the  intellect"  Alcott 
named  him.  Timely  is  it  to  recall  the  words 
in  days  of  shuffling  with  the  creeds,  as  all 
days  seem  to  be.  "  If  we  had  any  vivacity 
of  soul,  and  could  get  the  old  Hebrew 
spectacles  off  our  nose,"  said  Carlyle,  in 
such  days,  "should  we  run  to  Judea  or 
Houndsditch  to  look  at  the  doings  of  the 
Supreme?"  "It  is  in  religion  with  us  as 
in  astronomy  —  we  know  now  that  the 
earth  moves.  But  it  has  not  annihilated 
the  stars  for  us ;  it  has  infinitely  exalted 
and  expanded  the  stars  and  universe." 
The  circumscribing  of  God's  energy  to  par 
ticular  places  and  periods  was  irreverence 
to  Carlyle  and  Emerson.  He  is  a  living 
God,  his  Bible  has  no  covers,  and  the  only 
supernatural  is  the  "  natural  supernatural." 
The  gateway  to  divinity  they  knew  to  be 
humanity.  "The  true  shekinah  is  man," 
Carlyle  quotes  fondly  from  Saint  Chrysos- 


290      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

torn,  and  adds,  "  Where  else  is  the  God's- 
Presence  manifested  not  to  our  eyes  only, 
but  to  our  hearts,  as  in  our  fellow-man  ? " 
The  Christs  are  rooted  where  we  are  rooted. 
Jesus,  said  Emerson,  was  "true  to  what  is  in 
you  and  me ; "  his  life  is  the  life  of  every 
faithful  soul,  "written  large."  Both  Carlyle 
and  Emerson  broke  with  the  church  of  their 
day,  the  breach  in  Carlyle's  case  being 
wider  than  in  Emerson's.  "  Do  not  imag 
ine,"  he  said,  "  that  you  can,  by  any 
hocus-pocus,  distil  astral  spirits  from  the 
ruins  of  the  old  church."  "  The  church," 
Emerson  said,  "  is  not  large  enough  for  the 
man ;  in  the  churches  every  healthy  and 
thoughtful  mind  finds  itself  checked,  cribbed, 
confined."  To  no  other  do  we  owe  it  so 
much  that  this  is  not  so  true  to-day.  When 
Dean  Stanley  returned  from  America,  wrote 
Mr.  Conway  in  1879,  it  was  to  report  that 
religion  had  there  passed  through  an  evolu 
tion  from  Edwards  to  Emerson,  and  that 
"  the  genial  atmosphere  which  Emerson 
has  done  so  much  to  promote  is  shared 
by  all  the  churches  equally."  "  There  will 
be  a  new  church,"  Emerson  prophesied, 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          291 

"founded  on  moral  science,  at  first  cold 
and  naked,  a  babe  in  the  manger  again,  the 
algebra  and  mathematics  of  ethical  law,  the 
church  of  men  to  come,  without  shawms 
or  psaltery  or  sackbut;  but  it  will  have 
heaven  and  earth  for  its  beams  and  rafters ; 
science  for  symbol  and  illustration ;  it  will 
fast  enough  gather  beauty,  music,  picture, 
poetry."  Emerson  was  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Free  Religious  Association ;  and  he 
never  stated  his  creed  so  tersely  and  well  as 
in  his  second  address  to  the  Association. 
Looking  to  the  future  prophetically,  he 
looked  to  the  past,  and  especially  to  his 
Christian  inheritance,  reverently  and  grate 
fully.  He  would  have  sung  at  eve  with 
deeper  feeling  even  than  he  sang  at 
prime, — 

"  We  love  the  venerable  house 
Our  fathers  built  to  God  " ; 

and  Christ  and  Christianity  ever  held  to 
him  the  central  place  in  human  history. 
"  The  name  of  Jesus  is  not  so  much  written 
as  ploughed  into  the  history  of  this  world." 
He  was  glad  to  be  called  Christian,  and 


292      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

protested  with  sturdy  sanity  against  splen 
etic  jealousy  of  the  word  because  it  had 
been  prostituted  to  narrowness  and  super 
stition.  "  I  see  no  objection,"  he  said,  "  to 
being  called  a  Platonist,  a  Christian,  or  any 
other  affirmative  name, —  and  no  good  in 
negation " ;  and,  condemning  finical  and 
arbitrary  criticisms,  he  said :  "  Always  put 
the  best  interpretation  on  a  tenet.  Why 
not  on  Christianity  ? "  The  protest  which 
singles  out  Christ  as  the  one  leader  in 
religion  and  thought  to  be  denied  his  adjec 
tive  he  saw  to  be  as  narrow  as  the  supersti 
tion  which  applies  the  term  in  some  excep 
tional  and  unnatural  way ;  but  he  would  be 
Christian  or  Platonist  in  no  way  which  did 
not  always  leave  him  first  an  Emersonian  — 
himself — with  no  commanding  allegiance 
save  to  God  and  truth.  No  irreverence  ever 
drew  from  him  words  so  severe  as  irrev 
erence  toward  that  great  son  of  God  to 
whom  all  the  truly  divine  and  religious 
souls  of  our  portion  of  the  race  have  looked 
back  with  highest  veneration  for  highest 
inspiration.  To  Emerson,  as  to  Carlyle, 
Jesus  was  the  elder  brother  and  supreme 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          293 

friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit.  Most  Hellenic  of  all 
great  American  minds,  Greek  philosophy 
can  no  more  explain  Emerson  than  it  can 
explain  Milton.  Milton,  defending  the 
purity  of  his  youth,  declared  that,  "  though 
Christianity  had  been  but  slightly  taught 
him,"  yet  a  "  certain  reservedness  of  natural 
disposition  and  moral  discipline,  learned  out 
of  the  noblest  philosophy,"  had  been  enough 
to  keep  him  from  all  that  was  ignoble  and 
unclean.  But  to  the  antique  heroism  of  the 
mature  Milton  there  is  added  a  new  and 
deeper  element.  It  was,  as  Emerson  him 
self  said  with  such  beautiful  exactness,  "  the 
genius  of  the  Christian  sanctity  " ;  and,  in 
saying  it,  Emerson  paid  tribute  to  that  in 
Milton  which  we  can  pay  tribute  to  in  him 
self  in  no  other  words  so  good  as  his  :  "  Few 
men  could  be  cited  who  have  so  well  under 
stood  what  is  peculiar  in  the  Christian  ethics 
and  the  precise  aid  it  has  brought  to  men,  in 
being  an  emphatic  affirmation  of  the  omnipo 
tence  of  spiritual  laws  and,  by  way  of  mark 
ing  the  contrast  to  vulgar  opinions,  laying 
its  chief  stress  on  humility.  The  indiffer- 


294      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

ency  of  a  wise  mind  to  what  is  called  high 
and  low,  and  the  fact  that  true  greatness  is 
a  perfect  humility,  are  revelations  of  Chris 
tianity  which  he  well  understood."  The 
distinctive  Christian  element,  although  this 
not  in  respect  of  humility,  is  more  pro 
nounced  in  Milton  than  in  Emerson  ;  but 
in  no  man  since  Milton  have  the  Christian 
and  the  Greek  been  compounded  in  such 
harmony  and  fair  proportion.  Klopstock's 
"  Messias "  would  have  been  endured  by 
him  less  patiently  perhaps  than  by  Milton, 
although  hardly  less ;  and  both  knew  alike 
how,  and  how  only,  paradise  is  regained  — 
or  gained  —  by  every  Christ  and  every  man. 
Both  Emerson  and  Carlyle  did  much  to 
destroy  that  grotesque  exaggeration  of  Jesus 
as  an  unreal  demigod  and  of  Christianity  as 
the  absolute  and  only  religion,  which  has 
delayed  and  hindered  the  legitimate  and 
beautiful  influence  of  both  as  sadly  as 
capricious  dogmas  of  infallibility  and  plenary 
inspiration  have  obscured  the  charm  and 
virtue  of  the  Christian  scriptures  ;  they  have 
both  been  potent  forces  in  the  reformation 
which  is  at  last  restoring  to  the  Christian 


Emerson  and   Carlyle  295 

Church  itself  a  real  Bible  and  a  real  Christ, 
and  lifting  the  religious  world  to  a  compre 
hensive  and  worthy  philosophy  of  history. 
If  Carlyle  sometimes  went  too  far  in  his 
protest  and  impatience,  it  was  because  the 
Church's  own  sham  and  cant,  inertia,  and 
intellectual  impiety  compelled  the  extremest 
word  of  arrest  and  arousal.  Emerson  seldom 
went  too  far  in  aught,  and  never  here. 

o      J 

Carlyle  and  Emerson  believed  in  a  living 
God.  "  Through  every  star,  through  every 
grass-blade,"  says  Carlyle,  "and  most  through 
every  living  soul,  the  glory  of  a  present  God 
still  beams."  "  The  first  simple  foundation 
of  my  belief,"  said  Emerson,  "  is  that  the 
Author  of  nature  has  not  left  himself  without 
a  witness  in  any  sane  mind :  that  the  moral 
sentiment  speaks  to  every  man  the  law  after 
which  the  universe  was  made." 

They  believed  in  prayer,  not  as  a  means 
to  effect  a  private  end,  the  craving  of  a  par 
ticular  commodity, — "  as  soon  as  the  man 
is  at  one  with  God,  he  will  not  beg," — but 
as  communion  with  God.  u  As  well,"  said 
Emerson,  "  might  a  child  live  without  its 
mother's  milk  as  a  soul  without  prayer." 


296      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

The  first  sermon  which  he  ever  preached 
was  on  Prayer;  and  prayer  was  the  atmos 
phere  of  his  life.  His  paper  on  "  Prayers  " 
in  the  Dial  is  an  impressive  collection  of 
passages  showing  wherein  true  prayer  con 
sists.  He  loved  to  write  "at  large  leisure 
in  noble  mornings,  opened  by  prayer  or  by 
readings  of  Plato  "  or  others  of  the  divine 
masters.  He  prayed  before  the  Harvard 
address  of  1838;  and,  in  discussing  late  in 
life  the  question  of  morning  prayer  in  the 
Harvard  chapel,  he  said  it  secured  to  the 
young  men  "the  opportunity  of  assuming 
once  a  day  the  noblest  attitude  man  is 
capable  of."  "  Prayer,"  said  Carlyle  to  a 
young  friend,  in  his  latter  days,  "  is  and 
remains  always  a  native  and  deepest  impulse 
of  the  soul  of  man ;  and,  correctly  gone 
about,  is  of  the  very  highest  benefit  (nay, 
one  might  say,  indispensability)  to  every 
man  aiming  morally  high  in  this  world.  No 
prayer,  no  religion,  or  at  least  only  a  dumb 
and  lamed  one !  The  modern  hero  ought 
not  to  give  up  praying,  as  he  has  latterly  all 
but  done.  Prayer  is  the  aspiration  of  our 
poor,  struggling,  heavy-laden  soul  towards 


Emerson  and  Carlyle  297 

its  eternal  Father ;  and,  with  or  without 
words,  ought  not  to  become  impossible,  nor, 
I  persuade  myself,  need  it  ever.  Loyal  sons 
and  subjects  can  approach  the  King's  throne 
who  have  no  request  to  make  there,  except 
that  they  may  continue  loyal." 

They  believed  in  immortality.  "What 
is  excellent,  as  God  lives,  is  permanent." 
Carlyle,  it  has  been  said,  led  us  out  of 
Egypt,  but  into  the  desert ;  and  the  pessi 
mists  who  claim  him  for  their  father  say  that 
the  mistake  of  men  is  in  thinking  there  is 
anything  else  than  a  desert.  But  Carlyle 
had  been  on  Nebo,  and  caught  the  vision  of 
what  was  beyond  Jordan.  "  Know  of  a 
truth/'  he  said,  "  that  only  the  Time-shad 
ows  have  perished  or  are  perishable;  that 
the  real  Being  of  whatever  was,  and  what 
ever  is,  and  whatever  will  be,  is  even  now 
and  forever."  "  Everything  is  prospective," 
Emerson  said,  "  and  man  is  to  live  here 
after.  That  the  world  is  for  his  education 
is  the  only  sane  solution  of  the  enigma." 
"  When  we  accept  joyfully  the  tide  of  being 
which  floats  us  into  the  secrets  of  nature, 
and  live  and  work  with  her,  all  unawares 


298      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

the  advancing  soul  has  built  and  forged  for 
itself  a  new  condition,  and  the  question  and 
the  answer  are  one."  "  When  we  pro 
nounce  the  name  of  man,  we  pronounce 
the  belief  of  immortality.  All  great  men 
find  eternity  affirmed  in  the  very  promise 
of  their  faculties.  .  .  .  The  evidence  from 
intellect  is  as  valid  as  the  evidence  from 
love.  The  being  that  can  share  a  thought 
and  feeling  so  sublime  as  confidence  of 
truth  is  no  mushroom.  Our  dissatisfac 
tion  with  any  other  solution  is  the  blazing 
evidence  of  immortality." 

What  must  this  gospel  — vital,  vernacular, 
self-vouching,  and  not  as  of  the  scribes  — 
not  have  meant,  coming  into  the  Puseyism 
and  Simeonism  and  Jeffreyism  and  Whig- 
gism,  the  rust  and  dust,  and  "  great  and 
Thursday  lecture "  of  sixty  years  ago  ! 
Church,  State,  book,  and  man  were  gal 
vanized  and  moribund.  What  was  wanted 
was  reality,  shock,  impulse,  soul.  Carlyle 
and  Emerson  came  down  as  out  of  the  sky 
at  noon  and  troubled  the  stagnant  waters, 
and  there  was  life  again.  "  Emerson,"  says 
Lowell,  "awakened  us,  saved  us  from  the 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          299 

body  of  this  death."  "  The  works  of  two 
men,"  said  Tyndall  to  the  students  of  Lon 
don  University,  "  have  placed  me  here 
to-day, —  the  English  Carlyle  and  the  Amer 
ican  Emerson.  They  told  me  what  to  do 
in  a  way  that  caused  me  to  do  it,  and  all 
my  consequent  intellectual  action  is  to  be 
traced  to  this  purely  moral  source."  He 
spoke  for  ten  thousand  men. 

Individualism, —  that  was  the  need  of  the 
time,  as  it  is  indeed  the  need  of  every  time ; 
but  perhaps  it  is  not  the  greatest  need  of 
this  time.  The  shuffling  with  the  creeds 
goes  on  and  will  go  on ;  but  it  is  seen  to 
be  poor  business  now,  the  business  of  pale 
and  dilatory  men,  with  whom  the  word  of 
Kant  and  Lessing,  of  Channing  and  Parker, 
of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  has  not  yet  done  its 
work.  It  will  do  its  work.  What  we  need 
to  concern  ourselves  about  is  synthesis,  re 
organization,  and  advance.  Indeed,  is  it  not 
clear  that  true  constructive  elements  are  be 
ginning  in  a  hundred  places  to  emerge,  and 
that  a  time  of  faith  and  positive  religion  is 
nearer  than  many  fears  have  augured  to  this 
distracted,  analytic  age  ?  The  way  to  enter 


300     The  Influence  of  Emerson 

into  it  is  by  associated  action  in  good  work. 
Emerson,  always  in  advance,  saw  that  the 
time  had  come  for  this  a  generation  ago. 
That  another  believed,  as  he  did  not,  that 
Christ  turned  water  into  wine  at  Cana,  was 
a  slight  thing  compared  with  having  the 
Christ  spirit  in  the  heart.  With  the  man 
of  this  spirit  he  had  fellowship ;  he  had 
none  with  the  man  whose  sole  "  religion " 
was  pride  in  emancipation  from  some  real 
or  fancied  superstition.  His  primary  coun 
sel  to  the  Free  Religious  Association,  in  that 
strong  speech  in  which  he  stated  so  clearly 
his  own  simple  creed,  was  the  counsel  to 
sympathy  and  synthesis.  "  I  think  we  have 
disputed  long  enough.  I  think  we  might 
now  relinquish  our  theological  controversies 
to  communities  more  idle  and  ignorant  than 
we.  I  am  glad  that  a  more  realistic  church 
is  coming  to  be  the  tendency  of  society, 
and  that  we  are  likely  one  day  to  forget  our 
obstinate  polemics  in  the  ambition  to  excel 
each  other  in  good  works."  Emerson,  it 
has  been  said,  did  us  more  good  than  any 
other  among  us,  "  first,  by  encouraging  self- 
reliance  ;  and,  secondly,  by  encouraging  God- 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          301 

reliance."  What  we  now  also  need  is  the 
encouragement  of  man-reliance,  of  co-opera 
tion  and  fraternity ;  and  here  also  he  spoke 
the  prophetic  word,  if  it  was  not  indeed  the 
burden  of  his  gospel.  Carlyle  preached 
righteousness  to  us,  and  Emerson  taught 
us  truthfulness,  and  we  are  debtors  both 
to  the  Jew  and  to  the  Greek ;  but  to  these 
we  need  to  add  fellowship  and  brotherhood, 
—  to  the  Judaism  of  Carlyle  and  the  Plato n- 
ism  of  Emerson  the  warm  Christianism  and 
humanism  of  Mazzini,  which  knows  God 
in  its  heart  of  hearts  as  our  Father  and  our 
Mother  too,  and  we  one  body  and  every 
one  members  one  of  another. 

Yet  so  much  I  say  with  misgivings  and 
repentances,  and  remember  that  while,  as  the 
sun  of  the  late  afternoon  fell  on  Carlyle,  it 
mellowed  him,  and  whereas,  in  the  period 
of  the  "  Frederick,"  he  seemed  more  and 
more  to  deify  pure  will,  preach  blood  and 
iron,  and  have  almost  no  good  word  for 
what  most  of  us  count  progress,  he  now 
showed  greater  kindness  to  the  spirit  of  the 
age  and  let  fall  words  which  said  the  criti 
cism  of  the  forties  and  the  fifties  was  too 


302      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

harsh, —  so  Emerson  rose  steadily  above 
the  bare  individualism  which  goes  into  the 
closet  ever  and  shuts  the  door,  to  hear  what 
the  great  God  speaketh,  into  ever  fuller  com 
munion  with  the  nation  and  the  race.  Ever 
he  was  the  pleader  for  humaner  politics  and 
more  generous  social  institutions ;  but  more 
and  more  he  saw  that  we  must  consider  the 
communal  problem  and  communal  good. 
"  There  will  dawn  erelong  on  our  politics, 
on  our  modes  of  living,  a  nobler  morning, 
in  the  sentiment  of  love.  This  is  the  one 
remedy  for  all  ills,  the  panacea  of  nature. 
We  must  be  lovers,  and  at  once  the  im 
possible  becomes  the  possible.  Our  age 
and  history,  for  these  thousand  years,  has 
not  been  the  history  of  kindness,  but  of 
selfishness.  See  this  wide  society  of  labor 
ing  men  and  women.  We  allow  ourselves  to 
be  served  by  them,  we  live  apart  from  them, 
and  meet  them  without  a  salute  in  the  streets. 
We  do  not  greet  their  talents,  nor  rejoice  in 
their  good  fortune,  nor  foster  their  hopes, 
nor  in  the  assembly  of  the  people  vote  for 
what  is  dear  to  them.  Thus  we  enact  the 
part  of  the  selfish  noble  and  king  from  the 


Emerson  and  Carlyle          303 

foundation  of  the  world."  "The  State," 
he  said  again,  "  must  consider  the  poor  man, 
and  all  voices  must  speak  for  him.  Every 
child  that  is  born  must  have  a  just  chance 
for  his  bread.  .  .  .  No  one  should  take  more 
than  his  share."  He  warned  the  republic  of 
the  dangers  ahead,  if  our  social  inequalities 
and  injustices  are  not  corrected,  and  that 
it  is  "  better  to  work  on  institutions  by  the 
sun  than  by  the  wind."  The  same  deep 
thought  and  feeling  were  at  the  bottom  of 
Carlyle's  impatience  with  laissez-faire  and 
his  preaching  of  strong  government,  which 
is  why  the  socialist  finds  so  many  points  of 
contact  with  him. 

The  War  and  the  uprising  of  the  North 
had  much  to  do  with  deepening  in  Emerson 
the  communal,  national,  and  social  sense. 
They  made  a  profound  impression  on  him, 
gave  him  a  new  idea  of  men's  relations  to 
each  other,  of  the  value  of  the  State,  and 
of  the  solidarity  of  the  race.  "  Emerson," 
says  Lowell,  "reverencing  strength,  seeking 
the  highest  outcome  of  the  individual,  has 
found  that  society  and  politics  are  also  main 
elements  in  the  attainment  of  the  desired 


304      The  Influence  of  Emerson 

end,  and  has  drawn  steadily  manward  and 
worldward."  "  Age  brought  with  it/'  says 
his  biographer,  "  an  even  warmer  glow  of  in 
terest  in  his  fellow-men ;  and  the  new  life 
of  the  Republic  brought  to  him  an  enlarged 
perception  of  the  organic  life  of  the  race  in 
its  relations  to  morals  and  religion.  He 
came  to  see  a  new  value  in  a  united  religious 
life  for  the  people,  though  abating  no  jot  of 
his  soul-trust." 

Thus  always  is  Emerson  his  own  best  bal 
ancer  and  correcter.  A  high  philosophy  and 
devotion  to  humanity, —  that  is  the  conjunc 
tion  for  which  the  world  hungers  and  thirsts  ; 
and  that  conjunction  is  his  message.  If  in 
some  moment  of  new  insight  we  except  to 
this  or  that  upon  his  page,  so  also  we  know 
might  he ;  and  we  suspect  that  he  is  our 
forerunner  in  the  apprehension.  Always  the 
just  mind,  the  perfect  faith,  the  wholly  ex 
cellent  spirit,  the  good  will.  The  rest  is  but 
a  question  of  the  days  and  years :  it  does 
not  touch  the  soul.  And  so  all  criticism  is 
disarmed.  This,  we  say,  was  the  wise  man, 
the  perfect  and  upright ;  we  find  in  him  no 
fault  at  all. 


14  DAY  USE 

TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 
R.«       ££  ^  date  toLwhich  renewed. 

icwed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall 


Dye  end  of  WINTER  Q 

'--•;     -   ^ 


(H5W7slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


^.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


